Lower Saxony, 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 Lower Saxony, 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 Lower Saxony 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 Lower Saxony

Lower Saxony is the second-largest state by area and wraps around the city-state of Bremen. For many years it had just nine holidays, the minimum shared with every other German state. In 2018 the state parliament added Reformation Day, 31 October, taking the total to ten. An amending law of 22 June 2018 inserted "the 31st of October, as Reformation Day" into the state's act on holidays, and the first observance took place that autumn.

The decision followed Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg, which had already voted for the day, and went hand in hand with Bremen. The common argument in the north was that it should not lag behind the south, where Catholic holidays make the calendar longer.

The result is a calendar of ten, equal in length to those of Hamburg, Bremen and Hesse. Compared with its neighbours, it has fewer days than Saxony-Anhalt, which adds Epiphany as well as Reformation Day, and one fewer than North Rhine-Westphalia, whose extra days are of a different kind: it keeps two Catholic days, Corpus Christi and All Saints' Day, instead of Reformation Day. Corpus Christi, which Hesse observes, is a normal working day here.

Reformation Day is a Saturday in 2026, so in a year like this its effect on the working week is nil. The Second Day of Christmas and German Unity Day are Saturdays too. Lower Saxony, like the rest of Germany, gives no day off in exchange when a holiday lands on a weekend.

What the count does not include: Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve are working days, although offices often close early. Large regional events, such as the marksmen's festivals, have no legal status. School holidays, set by the education ministry, are separate. Because the law applies throughout the state, there are no local variants to exclude.

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.mi.niedersachsen.de/startseite/themen/allgemeine_angelegenheiten_des_inneren/feiertagsrecht/feiertagsgesetz-61491.html
• https://www.landesrecht.sachsen-anhalt.de/bsst/document/jlr-NNLST0000411CNN00000000003
• https://recht.nrw.de/lrgv/gesetz/01012000-bekanntmachung-der-neufassung-des-gesetzes-ueber-die-sonn-und-feiertage/
• https://www.rv.hessenrecht.hessen.de/bshe/document/jlr-NNLHE000051B5NN00000000002

How the counts are made