Germany (nationwide) public holidays 2026

2026 at a glance

• German Unity Day falls on Saturday 3 October and is not moved; Second Day of Christmas falls on Saturday 26 December and is not moved, because Germany has no statutory substitute days.
• In 2026, public holidays fall on 7 weekdays in Germany (nationwide), two fewer than in 2025.

Germany has no statutory substitute days: a public holiday that falls on a Saturday or Sunday is not moved to a weekday, so the following Monday stays a working day in these counts. These are the nine public holidays that apply in every German state. Every state adds at least one more, so a state's page gives its working days.

Public holidays in 2026

9 dates are counted as non-working in Germany (nationwide) 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
• Sep 22 working days in September
• Oct 22 working days in October, 1 holiday
• Nov 21 working days in November
• Dec 22 working days in December, 2 holidays

Compare with the rest of Germany

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 Germany (nationwide)

This page is the calendar of days off that apply in every German state at once, which makes it a floor rather than a working calendar. No employee lives in "Germany" as a legal unit: the holiday acts belong to the states, and each state adds days of its own to the shared core. Anyone who needs an accurate count of working days should open the page for the state in which they work.

The shared core consists of the nine days listed in the national introduction. Only one of them, 3 October, rests on federal law. The rest are in every state's act because all sixteen legislatures happened to choose them, not because Berlin requires it. This page is built as the intersection of the sixteen state calendars, so a day appears here only if it is a holiday in every state without exception. That is why Epiphany, Corpus Christi, All Saints' Day and Reformation Day are absent: each is missing in at least one state.

The practical effect is that the count shown here is the lowest anywhere in the country. A worker in Bavaria or Baden-Württemberg has three more public holidays than the figure here, a worker in Brandenburg has three more, and a worker in Hesse, Bremen, Hamburg or Lower Saxony has one more. Using this page for payroll, leave planning or a contract date would therefore understate the days off almost everywhere.

Germany has no statutory substitute day. In 2026 German Unity Day falls on a Saturday, Christmas Day on a Friday and the Second Day of Christmas on a Saturday, and the Saturday ones are simply lost to employees whose week runs from Monday to Friday. Nothing is added on the following Monday.

Some days that many people treat as free are deliberately left out. Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve are ordinary working days in law, although many employers close early or give leave. Carnival Monday is a custom in parts of the Rhineland, not a holiday. School holidays are set by education ministries and do not change working-day counts. Municipal holidays, such as the Augsburg Peace Festival, are described on the page of the state that contains the municipality.

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.gesetze-im-internet.de/einigvtr/art_2.html
• https://www.gesetze-bayern.de/Content/Document/BayFTG/true
• https://www.landesrecht-bw.de/bsbw/document/jlr-NNLBW00008DAENN00000000002
• https://bravors.brandenburg.de/gesetze/ftg_2003/6
• https://www.rv.hessenrecht.hessen.de/bshe/document/jlr-NNLHE000051B5NN00000000002
• https://www.mi.niedersachsen.de/startseite/themen/allgemeine_angelegenheiten_des_inneren/feiertagsrecht/feiertagsgesetz-61491.html

How the counts are made