Basel-Stadt, Switzerland public holidays 2026

2026 at a glance

• National Day falls on Saturday 1 August and is not moved; Saint Stephen's Day falls on Saturday 26 December and is not moved, because Switzerland has no statutory substitute days.
• In 2026, public holidays fall on 7 weekdays in Basel-Stadt, two fewer than in 2025.

Switzerland has no statutory substitute days: a public holiday that falls on a Saturday or Sunday is not moved to a weekday. Only 1 August is a federal holiday; each canton's law makes some other days equal to a Sunday, and these counts include exactly those. Further cantonal rest days, days kept only in some areas and days that many employers give off by custom are listed but not counted.

Public holidays in 2026

9 dates are counted as non-working in Basel-Stadt in 2026; 7 of them fall on a weekday.

Working days and hours by month

Working days are Monday to Friday minus the counted holidays. Hours are shown for a 7.5-hour and an 8-hour working day.

• Jan 21 working days in January, 1 holiday
• Feb 20 working days in February
• Mar 22 working days in March
• Apr 20 working days in April, 2 holidays
• May 18 working days in May, 3 holidays
• Jun 22 working days in June
• Jul 23 working days in July
• Aug 21 working days in August, 1 holiday
• Sep 22 working days in September
• Oct 22 working days in October
• Nov 21 working days in November
• Dec 22 working days in December, 2 holidays

Compare with the rest of Switzerland

Long weekends in 2026

Runs of three or more days off in a row without taking leave.

• 4 days Friday 3 April 2026 to Monday 6 April 2026
• 3 days Friday 1 May 2026 to Sunday 3 May 2026
• 3 days Saturday 23 May 2026 to Monday 25 May 2026
• 3 days Friday 25 December 2026 to Sunday 27 December 2026

Best days to take leave in 2026

The longest single break for each number of leave days, built around a public holiday.

Leave plans for the whole year

Non-overlapping breaks that give the most days off for a given number of leave days.

Try any budget from 1 to 30 days in the leave planner

Countdown

The days to the next holiday appear here when JavaScript is on.

The working days left this month and this year appear here when JavaScript is on.

Count working days between two dates

Calendar and data downloads

The subscription works in Google Calendar, Outlook and Apple Calendar. The CSV file also lists the days observed by some.

About public holidays in Basel-Stadt

The city canton of Basel-Stadt, made up of the city of Basel and two neighbouring municipalities, publishes its statutory holidays on the cantonal website. The canton counts nine days: New Year's Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Labour Day on 1 May, Ascension Day, Whit Monday, the national holiday on 1 August, Christmas Day and St Stephen's Day on 26 December. The cantonal page describes them as days that are in principle free of work, and the SECO annex to the Labour Act gives the same nine as days equated with a Sunday.

Because the canton is one dense urban area, the list applies uniformly, which is not true of its larger neighbours. In Aargau a leaflet from the labour office splits the territory by district, and Fribourg splits it by religious majority. In Basel-Stadt a worker in the city and a worker in Riehen or Bettingen follow the same calendar, so this page can give one count for the whole canton.

Most of the nine days are the standard Protestant set, so the useful question is how Basel differs from Bern. The answer is 1 May, which Basel-Stadt makes a full holiday, and the absence of 2 January, which Bern keeps. The canton also has no Catholic feasts such as Corpus Christi or All Saints, even though a short walk across the border leads to communities that do keep them. The same list is used by Basel-Landschaft, with which Basel-Stadt shares a labour market, a transport network and a great many commuters.

Everything on the page is counted: there is no second group of dates that are named but not treated like Sundays. Two things are left out altogether. The Basel Fasnacht, the carnival that opens on the Monday after Ash Wednesday, is a celebrated custom, but it is not on the statutory list, and employers decide whether to give time off. Half days such as Christmas Eve are in the same position.

If a listed holiday falls on a weekend, the canton does not offer a replacement day, and neither does this calendar. In 2026 that happens to 1 August and 26 December, both Saturdays, so the year has 254 working days between Monday and Friday, and 256 in 2027. Good Friday, Easter Monday, Ascension Day and Whit Monday follow Easter; the other five days sit on the same date every year.

Source and last check

Dates are calculated with the python-holidays library 0.108 and checked against the official sources below. Last checked: 15 November 2026.

Sources

• https://www.bs.ch/en/node/13669
• https://www.seco.admin.ch/dam/de/sd-web/x5LtHPJdNis5/Anhang-Feiertage-Schweiz-Auszug-ArG-ArGV1-5-SECO-SB-2024-DE.pdf

How the counts are made