Germany public holidays

What this value means

CONSTITUTIONAL BASIS: except for 3 October, public holidays in Germany are NOT federal law. Under Art. 70 GG the competence lies with the Laender, each of which has its own Feiertagsgesetz; the nine days above are those declared statutory in all 16 Laender and are therefore the correct nationwide set. NO SUBSTITUTION RULE: German law contains no mondayisation, lieu-day or roll-forward provision. A holiday falling on a Saturday or Sunday is simply lost to employees. This bites in 2026 for Tag der Deutschen Einheit (3 October is a SATURDAY) and Zweiter Weihnachtsfeiertag (26 December is a SATURDAY) - no compensating weekday is granted, which is why no substitute dates appear above. MOVEABLE FEASTS: computed from Easter Sunday 5 April 2026 (Gregorian computus) - Good Friday = Easter minus 2 (3 April), Easter Monday = Easter plus 1 (6 April), Ascension = Easter plus 39 (14 May, always a Thursday), Whit Monday = Easter plus 50 (25 May). DELIBERATELY EXCLUDED regional holidays, statutory in some Laender only and therefore outside a nationwide list: Heilige Drei Koenige / Epiphany 6 January (Baden-Wuerttemberg, Bayern, Sachsen-Anhalt); Internationaler Frauentag 8 March (Berlin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern - falls on a Sunday in 2026); Fronleichnam / Corpus Christi 4 June (Baden-Wuerttemberg, Bayern, Hessen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Rheinland-Pfalz, Saarland, and named municipalities in Sachsen and Thueringen); Mariae Himmelfahrt 15 August (Saarland and predominantly Catholic municipalities of Bayern); Weltkindertag 20 September (Thueringen); Reformationstag 31 October (Brandenburg, Bremen, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Niedersachsen, Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein, Thueringen); Allerheiligen 1 November (Baden-Wuerttemberg, Bayern, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Rheinland-Pfalz, Saarland); Buss- und Bettag, statutory only in Sachsen, which for 2026 falls on Wednesday 18 November (the Wednesday before 23 November). CORRECTED FINANCING NOTE ON BUSS- UND BETTAG: the holiday was abolished in every other Land in 1995 to compensate employers for the newly introduced Pflegeversicherung; because Sachsen alone kept it, employees IN SACHSEN - and only there - bear an additional 0.5 percentage point of the long-term care insurance contribution under Section 58(3) SGB XI, with a correspondingly lower employer share. Employees in the other 15 Laender do NOT pay this surcharge. Also excluded as not statutory anywhere: Heiligabend 24 December and Silvester 31 December, which are ordinary working days in law although most collective agreements treat them as half or full days off. Access: the BMI national-symbols page returned HTTP 400 to automated fetching; the Einigungsvertrag text was confirmed directly on the official BMJ consolidated-law portal gesetze-im-internet.de. 2027 EXTENSION (2026-07-29): 2027 dates are the permanent statutory calendar carried forward — fixed-date holidays keep their date; the five moveable feasts (Karfreitag, Ostermontag, Christi Himmelfahrt, Pfingstmontag, and the regional Fronleichnam) are computed for Western Easter Sunday 28 March 2027; Saxony's Buß- und Bettag is the Wednesday before 23 November = 17 November 2027. Germany applies no weekend substitution. Re-verify against each Land's Feiertagsgesetz near-year.

Get it programmatically

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

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