Hesse, Germany 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 8 weekdays in Hesse, 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. 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 Hesse in 2026; 8 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 21 working days in June, 1 holiday
• 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 Hesse

Hesse sits between the Catholic south and the Protestant north, and its holiday list reflects neither tradition fully. It keeps the nine days that exist everywhere in Germany and adds one: Corpus Christi, the Thursday sixty days after Easter. That makes ten statutory days off. In 2026 Corpus Christi is Thursday 4 June.

Hesse has no Epiphany and no All Saints' Day, although both are holidays in neighbouring Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria. It also has no Reformation Day, which Lower Saxony and the other northern states adopted from 2018. In effect a Hessian employee has as many days off as a colleague in Hamburg or Lower Saxony, but with a late-spring day instead of an autumn one.

Corpus Christi is useful in practice because it always falls on a Thursday and so creates a long weekend. Many employees take the Friday as leave, a bridge day that forms no part of the public holiday and is not counted here. Because the date moves with Easter, it ranges from late May to late June.

Its neighbours illustrate the contrasts. Thuringia, to the east, treats the day as a holiday only in selected Catholic municipalities, while Hesse applies it uniformly across the whole state. North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria keep it too. Lower Saxony, to the north, does not.

A holiday on a weekend is never moved to another day. In 2026 German Unity Day falls on a Saturday, as does the Second Day of Christmas, and Hesse provides nothing in return for either.

The count excludes customs that are not law. Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve are normal working days, although many employers close early. Trade fairs, local church festivals and carnival events have no holiday status, and school holidays are fixed by the education ministry. Hesse is treated as one jurisdiction because the law applies to every municipality alike.

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.rv.hessenrecht.hessen.de/bshe/document/jlr-NNLHE000051B5NN00000000002
• https://landesrecht.thueringen.de/bsth/document/jlr-NNLTH00003E03NN00000000006
• https://www.mi.niedersachsen.de/startseite/themen/allgemeine_angelegenheiten_des_inneren/feiertagsrecht/feiertagsgesetz-61491.html
• https://www.landesrecht-bw.de/bsbw/document/jlr-NNLBW00008DAENN00000000002

How the counts are made