Belgium public holidays

What this value means

TEN legal holidays, unchanged for 2026 — Belgium did not add an eleventh. The list and the legal basis were re-confirmed on the SPF Emploi page on 2026-07-22; the three movable dates follow the ecclesiastical computus from Easter Sunday 5 April 2026 (Easter Monday = Easter + 1; Ascension = Easter + 39, always a Thursday; Whit Monday = Easter + 50). PRIVATE SECTOR ONLY. The 1974 legislation governs employment relationships; public-sector staff follow their own regime (federal staff via BOSA), which differs — notably 15 November (Fête du Roi / Koningsdag) is observed by public services but is NOT one of the ten legal holidays and is correctly absent from this list. SUBSTITUTION IS MANDATORY BUT THE REPLACEMENT DATE IS NOT NATIONALLY FIXED — this is the defining feature of Belgian holiday data and the thing most third-party datasets get wrong. When a legal holiday falls on a Sunday or on a day of habitual inactivity in the undertaking (for most employers, Saturday), the worker is entitled to a replacement day, which must itself fall on a habitual day of activity; the replaced day loses its character as a holiday and the replacement day becomes the holiday. The replacement date is set in this order: by the competent commission paritaire (made binding by royal decree), failing which by the works council, failing which by agreement between the employer and the trade union delegation, failing which by collective agreement with the workers, failing which by individual agreement — and if none of these decides, the holiday is replaced by the next working day following it. The employer must post a notice of the replacement days before 15 December of the preceding year. APPLIED TO 2026: 15 August 2026 falls on a SATURDAY and 1 November 2026 falls on a SUNDAY, so both generate replacement days for essentially every private-sector employer — but those two replacement dates are employer- or sector-specific and cannot be served as national data, so they are not listed here. The other eight fall on working weekdays: 1 January Thursday, 6 April Monday, 1 May Friday, 14 May Thursday, 25 May Monday, 21 July Tuesday, 11 November Wednesday, 25 December Friday. PAY AND WORK: the ten days are not worked and are paid by the employer; working on a legal holiday is prohibited except in sectors where Sunday work is permitted, and then gives a right to compensatory rest. SECTORAL SUBSTITUTION ALSO EXISTS INDEPENDENTLY OF WEEKENDS: certain sectors replace a legal holiday with a customary local date — the official example given by belgium.be is 1 December (Saint-Éloi) replacing 11 November in the steel industry. DELIBERATE EXCLUSIONS: the community and regional celebration days — 11 July (Flemish Community), 27 September (French Community), 15 November (German-speaking Community, and Fête du Roi for public services) and 8 May (Iris Day, Brussels-Capital Region) — are NOT among the ten legal holidays and give private-sector employees no entitlement, although community and regional public services observe them; local patron-saint and kermesse days, and the extra days many collective agreements grant on top of the statutory ten, are contractual and also excluded. No date in this list is provisional. 2027 EXTENSION (2026-07-29): the 2027 dates are the permanent statutory holiday calendar carried forward — fixed-date holidays keep their date and Easter-linked holidays are computed for Easter Sunday 28 March 2027. This country applies no automatic weekend substitution, so holidays falling on a weekend are not moved. One-off holidays proclaimed for 2027 (if any) are not included; re-verify against the official source near-year.

Get it programmatically

curl https://euroref.dev/v1/be/public-holidays
# Free.
# History:    curl https://euroref.dev/v1/be/public-holidays/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://euroref.dev/provenance/be/public-holidays

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