It might not be any faster, but you can also do it as follows: 

use POSIX       qw( strftime       );
use Time::Local qw( timegm_nocheck );

my ($day, $mon, $year, $wday)
   = (localtime())[3..6];  # Defaults to now.

$year += 1900;
$day  += (7 - $wday + 4) % 7;

$next_th = timegm_nocheck(0,0,0,$day,$mon,$year);

print(strftime('%Y-%m-%d', gmtime($next_th)), "\n");

[download]

Only core modules are used.

Update: Now using GMT functions for the date to avoid problems from daylight savings time. (This should speed things up a bit too!) The date is still in localtime since we used localtime to fetch the current date.

Update: I had two names for the same variable ($day and $mday). Fixed.

In reply to Re: code to get the date for "next Thursday" by ikegami
in thread code to get the date for "next Thursday" by bfdi533

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