France public holidays 2026

2026 at a glance

• Assumption Day falls on Saturday 15 August and is not moved; All Saints' Day falls on Sunday 1 November and is not moved, because France has no statutory substitute days.
• In 2026, public holidays fall on 9 weekdays in France, one fewer than in 2025.

France 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. Whit Monday is counted as a public holiday, but many employers use it as the unpaid solidarity day (journée de solidarité), so it may be a working day for you. Alsace and Moselle add Good Friday and St Stephen's Day.

Public holidays in 2026

11 dates are counted as non-working in France in 2026; 9 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 21 working days in April, 1 holiday
• May 17 working days in May, 4 holidays
• Jun 22 working days in June
• Jul 22 working days in July, 1 holiday
• Aug 21 working days in August, 1 holiday
• Sep 22 working days in September
• Oct 22 working days in October
• Nov 20 working days in November, 2 holidays
• Dec 22 working days in December, 1 holiday

Compare with the rest of France

Long weekends in 2026

Runs of three or more days off in a row without taking leave.

• 3 days Saturday 4 April 2026 to Monday 6 April 2026
• 3 days Friday 1 May 2026 to Sunday 3 May 2026
• 3 days Friday 8 May 2026 to Sunday 10 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 France

The metropolitan France calendar on this page counts eleven non-working days a year. They are New Year's Day (1 January), Easter Monday, Labour Day (1 May), Victory in Europe Day (8 May), Ascension Day, Whit Monday, Bastille Day (14 July), Assumption Day (15 August), All Saints' Day (1 November), Armistice Day (11 November) and Christmas Day (25 December). Eight of them have fixed dates and the other three follow Easter: Easter Monday, Ascension Day, thirty-nine days after Easter, and Whit Monday, fifty days after it.

The list comes from article L3133-1 of the Code du travail. Because it sits in the labour code and applies to the whole of metropolitan France outside Alsace and Moselle, there is no regional layer to add. The overseas departments and territories have extra days of their own, such as the abolition of slavery commemorations, and they are not covered by this page.

Easter Sunday and Whit Sunday are both Sundays, so they never change a count and are not shown as separate days off. Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Mardi Gras, 14 August and 24 December are not public holidays in metropolitan France, even though many people take leave around them. They are therefore counted as ordinary working days here.

French law does not move a holiday that falls on a weekend. In 2026 Christmas Day is a Friday and in 2027 it is a Saturday, and in the latter year nothing is given in exchange. The counts on this site reflect that: when a holiday lands on a Saturday or Sunday, no weekday is subtracted from the working days of the period.

The number of working days is a calendar figure, not a promise about your own pay or leave. For ten of the eleven holidays an employee only has the day off if a collective agreement, a company agreement or custom provides it. If your employer treats Whit Monday as the journée de solidarité, you work that day without extra pay, and the total for your workplace is one day higher than the one shown here. Employees of Alsace and Moselle should use the separate page for those departments.

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.service-public.gouv.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F2405

How the counts are made