France public holidays 2026
France has 11 national public holidays in 2026. Take those and the weekends out of the calendar and 252 working days remain.
Holiday list for 2026
| Date | Weekday | Holiday | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Jan | Thursday | New Year's Day
Jour de l'an |
Nationwide |
| 6 Apr | Monday | Easter Monday
Lundi de Pâques |
Nationwide |
| 1 May | Friday | Labour Day
Fête du Travail |
Nationwide |
| 8 May | Friday | Victory in Europe Day
Victoire 1945 |
Nationwide |
| 14 May | Thursday | Ascension Day
Ascension |
Nationwide |
| 25 May | Monday | Whit Monday
Lundi de Pentecôte |
Nationwide |
| 14 Jul | Tuesday | Bastille Day
Fête nationale |
Nationwide |
| 15 Aug | Saturday rest day | Assumption Day
Assomption |
Nationwide |
| 1 Nov | Sunday rest day | All Saints' Day
Toussaint |
Nationwide |
| 11 Nov | Wednesday | Armistice Day
Armistice 1918 |
Nationwide |
| 25 Dec | Friday | Christmas Day
Noël |
Nationwide |
2026 at a glance
January 1 holiday
February
March
April 1 holiday
May 4 holidays
June
July 1 holiday
August 1 holiday
September
October
November 2 holidays
December 1 holiday
Working days in each month
| Month | Days | Weekend | Holidays | Working | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 31 | 9 | 1 | 21 | 168 |
| February | 28 | 8 | 0 | 20 | 160 |
| March | 31 | 9 | 0 | 22 | 176 |
| April | 30 | 8 | 1 | 21 | 168 |
| May | 31 | 10 | 4 | 17 | 136 |
| June | 30 | 8 | 0 | 22 | 176 |
| July | 31 | 8 | 1 | 22 | 176 |
| August | 31 | 10 | 0 | 21 | 168 |
| September | 30 | 8 | 0 | 22 | 176 |
| October | 31 | 9 | 0 | 22 | 176 |
| November | 30 | 9 | 1 | 20 | 160 |
| December | 31 | 8 | 1 | 22 | 176 |
| 2026 | 365 | 104 | 9 | 252 | 2,016 |
What the numbers say about France in 2026
The count uses Saturday and Sunday as the weekly rest days, the standard pattern in France. Only holidays that apply across the whole country are deducted. Someone working in a region with its own extra days will have a little more time off than these figures show.
2 holidays land on a rest day this year: Assumption Day (15 Aug), All Saints' Day (1 Nov). On the calendar alone that means no extra time off. Some countries move the day off to the next working day; whether that applies here is set by national rules, so check before you plan around it.
March is the longest working month with 22 days, and May the shortest with 17. A gap of 5 days is enough to make a fixed monthly target noticeably harder in some months than in others. Across quarters, Q2 is the leanest at 60 working days (April, May, June).
Among the 204 countries we track for 2026, the median number of national holidays is 12. With 11, France sits below the middle of the range, around the 37th percentile (the lowest count this year is 3, the highest 49).
Holidays create 5 stretches of three or more days off in a row. The longest lasts 3 days, from 4 April to 6 April (Easter Monday). There are also 3 bridge days: a single working day squeezed between a holiday and the weekend, where one day of leave turns into four or more days away. See every long weekend in 2026.
How holidays work in France
In France, a date being a public holiday and a worker being paid to stay home are two separate questions. 1 May is the only holiday on which virtually every employee has a general legal right to a paid day off. For the other dates, most people do not work because of collective agreements or long-standing custom, not because of a universal legal rule.
Holidays that fall on a weekend are generally not replaced, so the length of the French working year shifts by several days depending on the calendar.
Two things are outside the national count. Alsace and Moselle keep two extra holidays, Good Friday and 26 December, a legacy of the years when the region was governed by Germany. And May, with its cluster of holidays, is the season of the pont: the bridge day many people take off between a midweek holiday and the weekend. Bridge days are leave, not holidays, so they are not subtracted here, but expect staffing in May to fall short of what these figures imply.