Schleswig-Holstein, 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 Schleswig-Holstein, 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 Schleswig-Holstein 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 Schleswig-Holstein

Schleswig-Holstein has ten public holidays, the joint fewest of any German state. Nine are the national core: New Year's Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, 1 May, Ascension Day, Whit Monday, German Unity Day, and the two Christmas days. The tenth is Reformation Day on 31 October, which the state added in 2018: the new wording of its act on Sundays and holidays has applied since 30 March 2018. Hamburg, Bremen and Lower Saxony made the same change in the same year. The year before, the states had made 31 October 2017 a one-off holiday for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, and the north decided to keep the date for good.

Before that decision the north had the fewest days off in the country compared with the south, where Bavaria or Baden-Württemberg could reach thirteen. Introducing Reformation Day narrowed the gap by a day but left it in place. The choice of date fits a state that is mostly Protestant, and it matches the day that the eastern states already kept.

The result is that Schleswig-Holstein's calendar is identical to Hamburg's and Bremen's, and one day shorter than Mecklenburg-Vorpommern's, which adds Women's Day on 8 March. It lacks every Catholic holiday: Epiphany, Corpus Christi, the Assumption and All Saints' Day are working days here, with no municipal exceptions. Compared with North Rhine-Westphalia the state has a different second half of the year, with Reformation Day instead of All Saints' Day, and a lighter spring because it has no Corpus Christi.

The Easter-linked days in 2027 fall on 26 March, 29 March, 6 May and 17 May. Reformation Day lands on a Sunday that year, as it does in 2026 on a Saturday, so for two years running it takes nothing away from the working week.

The state does not move a holiday from a weekend to a weekday, and no employer has to offer a replacement. A holiday on a Sunday is counted as a date but changes no working-day total. Other days that feel like holidays, such as Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve and the Kiel Week sailing event, are working days in law and are not included here. School holidays follow the state's own calendar and do not affect the count either.

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-rechtsprechung.sh.juris.de/bssh/document/jlr-NNLSH00003261NN00000000005
• https://www.landesrecht-hamburg.de/bsha/document/jlr-NNLHH00006CB9
• https://www.landesrecht-mv.de/bsmv/document/jlr-NNLMV00007A2FNN00000000003

How the counts are made