Germany public holidays 2026
Germany has 9 national public holidays in 2026. Take those and the weekends out of the calendar and 254 working days remain.
Holiday list for 2026
| Date | Weekday | Holiday | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Jan | Thursday | New Year's Day
Neujahr |
Nationwide |
| 6 Jan | Tuesday | Epiphany
Heilige Drei Könige |
DE-BW, DE-BY, DE-ST |
| 8 Mar | Sunday rest day | International Women's Day
Internationaler Frauentag |
DE-BE, DE-MV |
| 3 Apr | Friday | Good Friday
Karfreitag |
Nationwide |
| 5 Apr | Sunday rest day | Easter Sunday
Ostersonntag |
DE-BB |
| 6 Apr | Monday | Easter Monday
Ostermontag |
Nationwide |
| 1 May | Friday | Labour Day
Tag der Arbeit |
Nationwide |
| 14 May | Thursday | Ascension Day
Christi Himmelfahrt |
Nationwide |
| 24 May | Sunday rest day | Pentecost
Pfingstsonntag |
DE-BB |
| 25 May | Monday | Whit Monday
Pfingstmontag |
Nationwide |
| 4 Jun | Thursday | Corpus Christi
Fronleichnam |
DE-BW, DE-BY, DE-HE, DE-NW, DE-RP, DE-SL |
| 15 Aug | Saturday rest day | Assumption Day
Mariä Himmelfahrt |
DE-SL |
| 20 Sep | Sunday rest day | World Children's Day
Weltkindertag |
DE-TH |
| 3 Oct | Saturday rest day | German Unity Day
Tag der Deutschen Einheit |
Nationwide |
| 31 Oct | Saturday rest day | Reformation Day
Reformationstag |
DE-BB, DE-MV, DE-SN, DE-ST, DE-TH, DE-HB, DE-HH, DE-NI, DE-SH |
| 1 Nov | Sunday rest day | All Saints' Day
Allerheiligen |
DE-BW, DE-BY, DE-NW, DE-RP, DE-SL |
| 18 Nov | Wednesday | Repentance and Prayer Day
Buß- und Bettag |
DE-SN |
| 25 Dec | Friday | Christmas Day
Erster Weihnachtstag |
Nationwide |
| 26 Dec | Saturday rest day | St. Stephen's Day
Zweiter Weihnachtstag |
Nationwide |
The 10 regional dates above are observed only in part of the country and are left out of every national total on this page.
2026 at a glance
January 1 holiday
February
March
April 2 holidays
May 3 holidays
June
July
August
September
October 1 holiday
November
December 2 holidays
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 | 2 | 20 | 160 |
| May | 31 | 10 | 3 | 18 | 144 |
| June | 30 | 8 | 0 | 22 | 176 |
| July | 31 | 8 | 0 | 23 | 184 |
| August | 31 | 10 | 0 | 21 | 168 |
| September | 30 | 8 | 0 | 22 | 176 |
| October | 31 | 9 | 0 | 22 | 176 |
| November | 30 | 9 | 0 | 21 | 168 |
| December | 31 | 8 | 1 | 22 | 176 |
| 2026 | 365 | 104 | 7 | 254 | 2,032 |
What the numbers say about Germany in 2026
The count uses Saturday and Sunday as the weekly rest days, the standard pattern in Germany. 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: German Unity Day (3 Oct), St. Stephen's Day (26 Dec). 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.
July is the longest working month with 23 days, and May the shortest with 18. 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 9, Germany sits below the middle of the range, around the 17th percentile (the lowest count this year is 3, the highest 49).
Holidays create 4 stretches of three or more days off in a row. The longest lasts 4 days, from 3 April to 6 April (Good Friday, Easter Monday). There are also 2 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 Germany
In Germany, holidays are mostly a matter for the states. Federal law fixes just one date, German Unity Day on 3 October. Every other public holiday is decided by the individual Land, and the result is a wide spread: roughly nine days in the northern city states and thirteen in Bavaria.
The dates that divide the country include Corpus Christi, Assumption, Reformation Day and All Saints' Day. Where each one applies still tracks, more or less, the historic Catholic and Protestant regions. Because this page counts only holidays observed in every Land, the national total is close to the real figure for someone in Hamburg and noticeably too low for someone in Munich.
Holidays that fall on a Saturday or Sunday are not moved to a weekday. In a year where several dates land on the weekend, Germans simply work more days, and the gap between a favourable year and an unfavourable one can reach three or four working days. Keep that in mind for budgets or contracts measured in working days rather than months.
One local curiosity: Augsburg has a holiday of its own, the Friedensfest on 8 August, which is observed nowhere else in Germany.