Valais, Switzerland public holidays 2026

2026 at a glance

• National Day falls on Saturday 1 August and is not moved; Assumption Day falls on Saturday 15 August and is not moved; All Saints' Day falls on Sunday 1 November and is not moved, because Switzerland has no statutory substitute days.
• In 2026, public holidays fall on 6 weekdays in Valais, 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 Valais in 2026; 6 of them fall on a weekday.

• not counted some employers only

Also observed by some

4 more days are holidays only for some employers, sectors or areas in 2026. 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 20 working days in February
• Mar 21 working days in March, 1 holiday
• Apr 22 working days in April
• May 20 working days in May, 1 holiday
• Jun 21 working days in June, 1 holiday
• Jul 23 working days in July
• Aug 21 working days in August, 2 holidays
• Sep 22 working days in September
• Oct 22 working days in October
• Nov 21 working days in November, 1 holiday
• Dec 21 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.

• 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 Valais

Valais is a bilingual canton, and its holidays are found in cantonal labour legislation rather than in a stand-alone holiday act. The days that the canton equates with Sundays under the federal Labour Act are New Year's Day, St Joseph's Day on 19 March, Ascension Day, Corpus Christi, the Assumption on 15 August, All Saints' Day, the Immaculate Conception on 8 December and Christmas Day. Together with the federal holiday on 1 August, that is nine days, and those are the ones this page counts. The reference is the SECO table of Swiss holidays, in its state of December 2024.

The list has a feature that surprises visitors from elsewhere in Switzerland: Good Friday is not on it. Valais also has no Labour Day and no Epiphany. In Vaud, next door, Good Friday, Easter Monday and Whit Monday are all holidays, and in Zurich the first two are as well.

Four more days appear in the calendar with the label "commonly a day off": 2 January, Easter Monday, Whit Monday and St Stephen's Day on 26 December. Valais does not name them as holidays of the Sunday kind. Many employers grant them out of custom and some collective agreements do too, but they are not part of the count and do not reduce the working-day total. A reader whose contract grants them should subtract them by hand.

For 2026 the nine counted dates remove six weekdays, because 1 August and the Assumption fall on a Saturday and All Saints' Day on a Sunday. That leaves 255 working days, and the same figure applies in 2027.

Valais is also a canton where local habit varies within one territory. The Upper Valais is German-speaking and the lower part French-speaking, and school calendars and employer practice sometimes differ between the two halves. Local patron feasts are celebrated without being statutory.

No holiday is moved when it falls on a Saturday or a Sunday. The Assumption falls on a Saturday in 2026 and on a Sunday in 2027, and All Saints' Day is a Sunday in 2026, so those years carry no compensation day. St Joseph's Day is Thursday 19 March 2026 and Friday 19 March 2027, both weekdays, and Corpus Christi falls on Thursday 4 June 2026 and Thursday 27 May 2027.

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.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