Lucerne, Switzerland public holidays 2028

2028 at a glance

• New Year's Day falls on Saturday 1 January and is not moved, because Switzerland has no statutory substitute days.
• All 2028 dates are provisional – calculated from the rule, because official dates are published only through 2027.
• In 2028, public holidays fall on 8 weekdays in Lucerne, three more than in 2027.

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 2028

9 dates are counted as non-working in Lucerne in 2028; 8 of them fall on a weekday.

• provisional calculated from the rule
• not counted some employers only

Also observed by some

4 more days are holidays only for some employers, sectors or areas in 2028. They are not counted as non-working days here.

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 21 working days in February
• Mar 23 working days in March
• Apr 19 working days in April, 1 holiday
• May 22 working days in May, 1 holiday
• Jun 21 working days in June, 1 holiday
• Jul 21 working days in July
• Aug 21 working days in August, 2 holidays
• Sep 21 working days in September
• Oct 22 working days in October
• Nov 21 working days in November, 1 holiday
• Dec 19 working days in December, 2 holidays

Compare with the rest of Switzerland

Long weekends in 2028

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

• 3 days Friday 14 April 2028 to Sunday 16 April 2028
• 4 days Saturday 23 December 2028 to Tuesday 26 December 2028
• 3 days Saturday 30 December 2028 to Monday 1 January 2029

Best days to take leave in 2028

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 Lucerne

Lucerne regulates its holidays in the Rest Days and Shop Closing Act (Ruhetags- und Ladenschlussgesetz, systematic number 855). Section 1 sets out the public rest days in three groups. The first is Sundays. The second is a list that applies across the whole canton: New Year's Day, Good Friday, Ascension, Corpus Christi, the federal holiday on 1 August, the Assumption (15 August), All Saints' Day (1 November), the Immaculate Conception (8 December), Christmas Day and St Stephen's Day.

The third group depends on the municipality. St Joseph's Day (19 March) and the patronal feast of a parish become public rest days only where the local council declares them, and then only within that municipality. Because the choice differs from town to town, these days are neither listed nor counted on this page, and someone who works in a municipality that has declared one has a working day fewer than the figures shown.

The line between counted and listed runs through the middle of the canton-wide list. The federal Labour Act lets a canton equate at most eight days besides 1 August with Sundays, and Lucerne uses its eight on New Year's Day, Good Friday, Ascension, Corpus Christi, the Assumption, All Saints' Day, Christmas Day and St Stephen's Day. With 1 August they make the nine holidays counted here. The Immaculate Conception is a canton-wide rest day too, yet it is not one of the eight, so it appears in the table as a cantonal holiday and is left out of the totals.

Three days often assumed to be holidays are absent from the act: Easter Monday, Whit Monday and 2 January. Employers in Lucerne may grant them, and some do, so the table shows them as commonly a day off. They are not counted, because the law does not make them rest days.

In 2026 five of the nine counted days fall on a weekday, since 1 August, the Assumption and St Stephen's Day land on a Saturday and All Saints' Day on a Sunday. That leaves 256 working days, and 2027 also has 256.

Against its neighbours the picture is mixed. Schwyz counts St Joseph's Day as a canton-wide feast, and Nidwalden lists it, whereas Lucerne leaves it to the municipalities. Obwalden shares most of the Catholic days but lists Bruder Klaus in September. Schaffhausen, by contrast, counts Easter Monday, Whit Monday and 1 May, none of which Lucerne counts, and has no saints' days.

Switzerland has no substitute days. If a holiday falls on a Saturday or a Sunday, nothing is moved and no weekday is added in its place.

Good Friday is also one of the five high holidays named in section 2, together with Easter Sunday, Whit Sunday, the Federal Day of Prayer and Christmas Day, which carry stricter rules on public events.

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.lexfind.ch/tolv/58445/de
• 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