St. Gallen, Switzerland public holidays 2026

2026 at a glance

• National Day falls on Saturday 1 August and is not moved; All Saints' Day falls on Sunday 1 November 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 6 weekdays in St. Gallen, 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 St. Gallen in 2026; 6 of them fall on a weekday.

• not counted some employers only

Also observed by some

1 more day is a holiday only for some employers, sectors or areas in 2026. It is not counted as a non-working day 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 20 working days in February
• Mar 22 working days in March
• Apr 20 working days in April, 2 holidays
• May 19 working days in May, 2 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, 1 holiday
• 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 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 St. Gallen

In the canton of St Gallen the public rest days are set by the cantonal law on rest days and shop opening (Gesetz über Ruhetag und Ladenöffnung, systematic number 552.1). Its article 2 says that Sundays and the following holidays are public rest days: New Year's Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Ascension Day, Whit Monday, the federal holiday, All Saints' Day, Christmas Day and St Stephen's Day. That gives nine named days, and the federal labour authority (SECO) shows the same nine as equal to a Sunday, so all of them are counted on this page.

The law also separates a smaller group called high holidays (hohe Feiertage): Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Whit Sunday, the Federal Day of Prayer and Christmas Day. The distinction matters for events and noise rather than for pay or days off, and it does not create extra days of leave.

The list does not name 1 May or 2 January. Berchtold's Day, 2 January, is observed by many employers and schools in practice, so the page shows it separately as commonly a day off, but it is not in the law and is not counted. Neighbouring Thurgau counts 2 January and lists 1 May as a cantonal holiday, and Zurich counts 1 May, so a person who commutes across a cantonal border can have a different calendar from a colleague living a few kilometres away.

All Saints' Day is the one Catholic feast on the St Gallen list, and it separates the canton from Zurich and Thurgau, which have no holiday on 1 November. The Catholic calendar is thin compared with Uri, where the Assumption, the Immaculate Conception and Corpus Christi are also counted.

In 2026 six of the nine dates fall on a weekday, which leaves 255 working days from Monday to Friday. The law has no rule for moving a holiday that lands on a weekend, and no weekday takes its place. All Saints' Day is a Sunday in 2026, and the federal holiday is a Saturday in 2026 and a Sunday in 2027. Christmas Day and St Stephen's Day fall on a Saturday and a Sunday in 2027, so that year loses both, and the total of 255 working days is the same as in 2026 because All Saints' Day moves to a Monday. Easter-linked days follow the date of Easter, which in 2027 is 28 March.

Half days and customary closing days, such as the afternoon of Christmas Eve, are the choice of the employer and do not appear in the law, so they are not part of the count.

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://sg.lexwork.naz.ch/de/dta/552.1.pdf
• 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