Bremen, Germany public holidays 2026

2026 at a glance

• German Unity Day falls on Saturday 3 October and is not moved; Reformation Day falls on Saturday 31 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 Bremen, three 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. Each German state sets its own public holidays on top of the nine that apply everywhere.

Public holidays in 2026

10 dates are counted as non-working in Bremen 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, 2 holidays
• 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 Bremen

The city-state of Bremen, which includes the port of Bremerhaven, has ten public holidays a year: the nine shared by every German state and Reformation Day on 31 October. The tenth day is recent. Bremen made 31 October a permanent holiday in 2018, in the same year as Hamburg, Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, which narrowed the gap with the southern states, where more holidays of their own apply. Its act lists it last, as item j of the state-recognised holidays. Mecklenburg-Vorpommern already kept the date.

Before 2018 Bremen had nine. It has no Catholic days at all: Epiphany, Corpus Christi, All Saints' Day and the Assumption are ordinary working days throughout the state. The list is therefore as long as those of Hamburg, Lower Saxony and Hesse, and shorter than the lists of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg by two days.

The weekday on which 31 October falls decides whether the newer holiday does anyone any good. In 2026 it is a Saturday, so for most employees the Bremen calendar offers no more days off than the national floor. In years when it lands inside the working week it is a normal day off.

Lower Saxony surrounds Bremen and uses the same list, so a commuter crossing the state boundary keeps the same days off. Someone travelling from North Rhine-Westphalia, which keeps Catholic holidays instead, will find Bremen has fewer of them.

A holiday that lands on a weekend is not moved. German Unity Day and the Second Day of Christmas are both Saturdays in 2026, and no weekday is given in their place. The statute provides for no substitute day, and these counts follow it.

The count leaves out closures by custom. Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve are working days in law, though many shops and offices shut early. Local fairs and the carnival season are events, not holidays. School holidays are set by the state's education authority and have no effect on working days. Bremen is a single jurisdiction for holiday purposes, so no municipal variants need to be set aside.

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.transparenz.bremen.de/metainformationen/gesetz-ueber-die-sonn-gedenk-und-feiertage-vom-12-november-1954-145882?template=20_gp_ifg_meta_detail_d
• https://www.mi.niedersachsen.de/startseite/themen/allgemeine_angelegenheiten_des_inneren/feiertagsrecht/feiertagsgesetz-61491.html

How the counts are made