Denmark public holidays

What this value means

TEN helligdage in 2026. Denmark has no single 'public holidays act'; the days derive from the Church of Denmark's calendar. The only express STATUTORY enumeration is the one inserted by lov nr. 214/2023 § 7 into lukkeloven § 2, stk. 1, which now reads that retail sale is prohibited 'på helligdage (nytårsdag, skærtorsdag, langfredag, første og anden påskedag, Kr. himmelfartsdag, første og anden pinsedag og første og anden juledag), grundlovsdag og juleaftensdag samt efter kl. 15 på nytårsaftensdag'. The ten names in that parenthesis are exactly the ten dates served above, verified verbatim in the official PDF of lov 214/2023 on 2026-07-22. STORE BEDEDAG IS ABOLISHED AND THIS IS THE MOST COMMON ERROR IN DANISH HOLIDAY DATA. Bekendtgørelse nr. 270 af 7. marts 2023 § 1 states: 'Bededag, som blev indført som helligdag i Danmark ved kgl. forordning i 1686, afskaffes som helligdag med virkning fra den 1. januar 2024.' In 2026 Store Bededag would have fallen on FRIDAY 1 MAY 2026 (the fourth Friday after Easter). It is NOT a holiday and is deliberately absent. Lov nr. 214/2023 § 2 further disapplies all holiday-specific pay and leave provisions in legislation, collective agreements, individual contracts and custom for that day, and § 3 gives monthly-paid employees whose working time increases a wage supplement of 0.45% of annual salary, settled twice yearly with May and August pay — so an employer paying a Danish salary in 2026 should expect that supplement, not a day off. WATCH ITEM: reinstatement is live politics in this Folketing election year. Two parliamentary motions to reinstate Store Bededag were tabled and are on the Folketing register — 2025/1 BSF 109 (27 February 2026) and 2025/2 BSF 3 (15 April 2026). Both are beslutningsforslag (non-binding motions), NOT enacted law; the Retsinformation search on 2026-07-22 returns no act reinstating the day. Even if one passes later in 2026 it cannot retroactively restore 1 May 2026. NO SUBSTITUTION / MONDAYISATION EXISTS IN DANISH LAW. A helligdag falling at the weekend is simply absorbed with no replacement day. In 2026 this bites on Første påskedag (Sunday 5 April), Første pinsedag (Sunday 24 May) and Anden juledag (SATURDAY 26 December). The weekday distribution for 2026 is: 1 Jan Thursday, 2 Apr Thursday, 3 Apr Friday, 5 Apr Sunday, 6 Apr Monday, 14 May Thursday, 24 May Sunday, 25 May Monday, 25 Dec Friday, 26 Dec Saturday — so only seven of the ten fall on working weekdays. All movable dates were computed from Easter Sunday 5 April 2026 (Skærtorsdag = Easter −3, Langfredag = Easter −2, Anden påskedag = Easter +1, Kristi himmelfartsdag = Easter +39, Første pinsedag = Easter +49, Anden pinsedag = Easter +50) and independently checked. DELIBERATE EXCLUSIONS, EACH OF WHICH SOME DATASETS WRONGLY INCLUDE: (1) GRUNDLOVSDAG, 5 June 2026 (a Friday) — Constitution Day is NOT a helligdag. It appears in lukkeloven § 2 as a separate shop-closing day alongside juleaftensdag, listed outside the helligdag parenthesis. Most collective agreements give it as a full or half day off, and public-sector staff generally have it free, but that is contractual, not statutory. (2) JULEAFTENSDAG, 24 December 2026 (a Thursday) — Christmas Eve is likewise a statutory shop-closing day but not a helligdag; whether it is paid leave depends entirely on the applicable agreement. (3) NYTÅRSAFTENSDAG, 31 December 2026 — shops must close only after 15:00; not a holiday at all. (4) 1 MAY (International Workers' Day) — never a Danish public holiday, though widely a half day under agreements; in 2026 it also happens to be the date the abolished Store Bededag would have fallen on, which makes it doubly likely to be mis-tagged. CRITICAL CAVEAT ON PAID LEAVE: Danish law does NOT confer a general statutory right to paid leave on helligdage. The days are defined for church, shop-closing and time-limit purposes; entitlement to time off and to pay is governed by the individual contract or the applicable overenskomst, including søgnehelligdagsbetaling / fritvalgs savings schemes, which lov 214/2023 § 2, stk. 2 expressly preserved. TERRITORIAL SCOPE: this list covers metropolitan Denmark only. Lov nr. 214/2023 § 8 states 'Loven gælder ikke for Færøerne og Grønland'; the Faroe Islands and Greenland keep their own holiday calendars (and the Faroes their own currency), and neither is covered by this file. Access quirk: the consolidated text of lukkeloven on Retsinformation is still LBK nr 515 af 30/04/2019, which PREDATES the 2023 amendment and therefore shows § 2, stk. 1 WITHOUT the holiday enumeration — reading that consolidation alone will make you think no statutory list exists. The enumeration must be read from lov nr. 214/2023 § 7 itself. Retsinformation serves both only as PDFs to automated clients (HTML is a JavaScript shell). 2027 EXTENSION (2026-07-29): 2027 dates carried forward from the permanent statutory holiday calendar — fixed-date holidays keep their date, Easter-linked holidays computed for Easter Sunday 28 March 2027. No automatic weekend substitution applies. One-off 2027 proclamations (if any) are not included; re-verify against the official source near-year.

Get it programmatically

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

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