United Kingdom public holidays
Statutory bank holidays for calendar year 2026. Served list is England and Wales; Scotland and Northern Ireland have partly different schedules, detailed in notes.
| Current value | 16 days held |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2026-01-01 |
| In force until | 2026-12-31 |
| Official source | GOV.UK official bank holidays list (machine-readable feed), maintained by the Government Digital Service under the Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971; Good Friday and Christmas Day are common-law/customary holidays in England and Wales rather than Schedule 1 bank holidays |
| Last verified | 2026-07-30 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
SERVED LIST IS ENGLAND AND WALES (8 days), verified date-for-date against the gov.uk/bank-holidays.json feed on 20 July 2026. Statutory basis: Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971, Schedule 1, plus days appointed by Royal Proclamation each year under s.1(2)-(3) of that Act. Good Friday and Christmas Day are not in Schedule 1 for England and Wales — they are customary common-law holidays — but are treated identically in practice and are included here. SUBSTITUTION RULE APPLIED: where a bank holiday falls on a weekend, a substitute weekday (normally the following Monday) is given. In 2026 this bites once for England and Wales: Boxing Day, 26 December 2026, is a Saturday, so the substitute day is Monday 28 December 2026 (the feed flags it 'Substitute day'). Christmas Day 2026 falls on a Friday and needs no substitute; New Year's Day 2026 is a Thursday. Easter 2026: Good Friday 3 April, Easter Monday 6 April. REGIONAL VARIANTS DELIBERATELY EXCLUDED FROM THE SERVED ARRAY: Scotland (10 days in the feed) has no Easter Monday, adds 2 January (Fri 2 Jan 2026), takes its Summer bank holiday on the FIRST Monday of August (3 August 2026, not 31 August), adds St Andrew's Day (Mon 30 November 2026), and in 2026 only carries an additional one-off 'World Cup bank holiday' on Monday 15 June 2026 as listed in the official GOV.UK feed. Northern Ireland (10 days in the feed) adds St Patrick's Day (Tue 17 March 2026) and the Battle of the Boyne / Orangemen's Day — 12 July 2026 is a Sunday, so the substitute day is Monday 13 July 2026 — and otherwise follows the England and Wales pattern including the 28 December Boxing Day substitute. No 2026 date is provisional: all are fixed by calendar rule or already proclaimed. Bank holidays are not a statutory right to paid leave for workers; paid annual leave (5.6 weeks) under the Working Time Regulations 1998 may or may not include them depending on contract. 2027 EXTENSION (2026-07-30): taken from the OFFICIAL gov.uk bank-holidays list for 2027 (all three divisions, read live). Substitute days are as proclaimed: Christmas Day (Sat) -> Mon 27 Dec, Boxing Day (Sun) -> Tue 28 Dec, Scotland's 2nd January (Sat) -> Mon 4 Jan. Scotland 2027 has no Easter Monday and takes its Summer bank holiday on 2 Aug (first Monday); the 2026 one-off World Cup bank holiday does not recur. One-off proclamation holidays can be added at any time; none announced for 2027.
Get it programmatically
curl https://euroref.dev/v1/gb/public-holidays
# Free.
# History: curl https://euroref.dev/v1/gb/public-holidays/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://euroref.dev/provenance/gb/public-holidaysOther United Kingdom series: policy interest rate · VAT rate · minimum wage · inflation rate (CPI) · corporate tax rate · income tax rates · late-payment interest rate