Sweden public holidays

What this value means

13 named allmänna helgdagar in 2026. THE STATUTORY TEXT, verified on 2026-07-22, is 1 §: 'Med allmän helgdag avses i lag eller annan författning söndagar, däribland påskdagen och pingstdagen, nyårsdagen, trettondedag jul, första maj, juldagen och annandag jul, även när de inte infaller på en söndag, långfredagen, annandag påsk, Kristi himmelsfärdsdag, nationaldagen, midsommardagen och alla helgons dag.' EVERY SUNDAY IS A STATUTORY PUBLIC HOLIDAY IN SWEDEN. This is the single most-missed feature of Swedish holiday law and it is right there in the first word of 1 §. The list above serves the 13 NAMED days only; a consumer answering 'is date D a public holiday in Sweden?' must ALSO return true for all 52 Sundays of 2026, only two of which (påskdagen 5 April and pingstdagen 24 May) appear above. Any Sweden holiday dataset that returns exactly 13 dates and nothing else is incomplete for legal-deadline purposes, which is what this statute is actually for. NO SUBSTITUTION, NO MONDAYISATION. Sweden has no rule moving a holiday that falls on a weekend and grants no replacement day off. This bites in 2026: FOUR of the thirteen fall on a Saturday — Sveriges nationaldag (6 June), Midsommardagen (20 June, always a Saturday by definition), Alla helgons dag (31 October, always a Saturday by definition) and Annandag jul (26 December). Only SEVEN land on ordinary working weekdays: 1 Jan (Thu), 6 Jan (Tue), 3 Apr (Fri), 6 Apr (Mon), 1 May (Fri), 14 May (Thu), 25 Dec (Fri). WHIT MONDAY IS NOT A HOLIDAY AND HAS NOT BEEN SINCE 2005 — THE MOST COMMON STALE-DATA ERROR FOR SWEDEN. SFS 2004:1320, in force 1 April 2005, added nationaldagen (6 June) to 1 § and simultaneously removed annandag pingst (Whit Monday) from it, as a deliberately day-count-neutral swap. Annandag pingst 2026 is Monday 25 May and is an ORDINARY WORKING DAY. A Swedish holiday list containing 25 May 2026, or containing 14 dates, is describing pre-2005 law. THE ACT CONFERS NO RIGHT TO PAID LEAVE. 1 § is purely definitional — it says what 'allmän helgdag' means 'i lag eller annan författning', i.e. it feeds other legislation (computation of time limits, licensing, opening hours). It does not by itself give any employee a paid day off. Entitlement to leave and to holiday pay on these days comes from the applicable collective agreement or the individual employment contract. TWO DATES MUST BE RECOMPUTED EVERY YEAR AND ARE ROUTINELY HARD-CODED WRONG: 2 § defines midsommardagen as the Saturday falling between 20 and 26 June (2026: Saturday 20 June — the earliest possible date) and alla helgons dag as the Saturday falling between 31 October and 6 November (2026: Saturday 31 October — again the earliest possible date). The Easter-linked dates follow the ecclesiastical computus from Easter Sunday 5 April 2026: långfredagen = Easter − 2 (3 April), annandag påsk = Easter + 1 (6 April), Kristi himmelsfärdsdag = Easter + 39 (14 May), pingstdagen = Easter + 49 (24 May). DELIBERATE EXCLUSIONS — AND A WARNING FOR BUSINESS-DAY CALENDARS. The three 'helgdagsaftnar' — julafton (24 December), midsommarafton (19 June 2026) and nyårsafton (31 December) — are NOT allmänna helgdagar and are correctly absent from this list. In practice they are the most reliably non-working days in the Swedish year: nearly every workplace, bank and public office is closed or on half-day, and most collective agreements treat them as days off. Any settlement, SLA or delivery calendar that treats 24 December or 19 June 2026 as a normal Swedish business day will be wrong in fact even though it is right in law — flag them as a separate 'de facto closed' set rather than folding them into this statutory list. Also excluded, for the same reason: valborgsmässoafton (30 April), skärtorsdag (Maundy Thursday, 2 April 2026), and Lucia (13 December). The 'klämdag' of Friday 15 May 2026, squeezed between Ascension Thursday and the weekend, is not a holiday but is very widely taken as leave. NO SUB-NATIONAL VARIATION. Unlike Germany, Italy or Spain, Sweden's holiday calendar is uniform across all 290 municipalities and 21 regions; there are no municipal patron-saint days and no county exceptions. ACCESS QUIRK: riksdagen.se serves the consolidated SFS text but automated fetches of long statutes truncate; lagen.nu mirrors the same consolidated text with amendment annotations and reproduced 1 § and 2 § cleanly in this pass. 2027 EXTENSION (2026-07-30): statutory calendar per Lag (1989:253) om allmanna helgdagar — fixed dates; Western-Easter feasts for Easter Sunday 28 Mar 2027; Midsommardagen = 'den lordag som infaller under tiden den 20-26 juni' (26 Jun 2027); Alla helgons dag = the Saturday in 31 Oct-6 Nov (6 Nov 2027). Sweden applies no weekend substitution (National Day 6 Jun 2027 falls on a Sunday and is not compensated statutorily).

Get it programmatically

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

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