Germany: public holidays in 2026

Kept everywhere: 9
On a weekend: 2
Make a long weekend: 5
Regional only: 11

Germany keeps 9 public holidays throughout the country in 2026, and a further 11 that apply only in named regions. The difference matters: the second group is a working day for most of the country.

2 of the 9 fall on a Saturday or a Sunday in 2026: Day of German Unity and 2nd Day of Christmas. Those are days nobody takes off, and most countries here do not move them to the Monday.

5 land on a Monday or a Friday and make a long weekend without spending a day of leave: Good Friday, Easter Monday, Labour Day and Pentecost Monday.

The 11 regional days are kept in 17 regions between them, and include Epiphany, International Women's Day and Easter Sunday. Whether any of them applies depends on where in the country you are, not on which company you work for.

May carries 3 of them, more than any other month of the year.

The same source already carries 2027, so next year dates are known rather than guessed.

The dates come from an openly licensed aggregation of official national publications. A day is counted here only when it is a public holiday: a day an employer may grant rather than a day the country stops is left out. Days are named in this language where the source has that name and in English otherwise. Whether a day applies everywhere is read from whether the source attaches any region to it, not from which parliament passed it, because in Germany as in several countries here the two answers differ.

A public holiday is not a promise that everything is shut, and it is not the same thing as a day off work in every contract. Dates more than a year or two ahead can still move, because some of them are fixed by decree each year rather than by the calendar.