Netherlands public holidays 2026
Netherlands has 11 national public holidays in 2026. Take those and the weekends out of the calendar and 253 working days remain.
Holiday list for 2026
| Date | Weekday | Holiday | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Jan | Thursday | New Year's Day
Nieuwjaarsdag |
Nationwide |
| 3 Apr | Friday | Good Friday
Goede Vrijdag |
Nationwide |
| 5 Apr | Sunday rest day | Easter Sunday
Eerste Paasdag |
Nationwide |
| 6 Apr | Monday | Easter Monday
Tweede Paasdag |
Nationwide |
| 27 Apr | Monday | King's Day
Koningsdag |
Nationwide |
| 5 May | Tuesday | Liberation Day
Bevrijdingsdag |
Nationwide |
| 14 May | Thursday | Ascension Day
Hemelvaartsdag |
Nationwide |
| 24 May | Sunday rest day | Pentecost
Eerste Pinksterdag |
Nationwide |
| 25 May | Monday | Whit Monday
Tweede Pinksterdag |
Nationwide |
| 25 Dec | Friday | Christmas Day
Eerste Kerstdag |
Nationwide |
| 26 Dec | Saturday rest day | St. Stephen's Day
Tweede Kerstdag |
Nationwide |
2026 at a glance
January 1 holiday
February
March
April 4 holidays
May 4 holidays
June
July
August
September
October
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 | 3 | 19 | 152 |
| 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 | 8 | 253 | 2,024 |
What the numbers say about Netherlands in 2026
The count uses Saturday and Sunday as the weekly rest days, the standard pattern in Netherlands. 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.
3 holidays land on a rest day this year: Easter Sunday (5 Apr), Pentecost (24 May), 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 59 working days (April, May, June).
Among the 204 countries we track for 2026, the median number of national holidays is 12. With 11, Netherlands sits below the middle of the range, around the 37th 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 Sunday, 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 Netherlands
In the Netherlands, being on the public holiday list does not automatically mean a day off. Only a few Dutch holidays come with a legal right to paid leave. In most cases the entitlement is set by the collective labour agreement for the sector, which means a given date may be paid leave in one industry and an ordinary working day in the next. Good Friday shows this most clearly: it is an official holiday, and many people work on it anyway.
King's Day is 27 April, but when that date is a Sunday it is celebrated on 26 April instead. It is one of the few Dutch holidays whose date actually moves.
Check Liberation Day, 5 May, before you rely on it. It is commemorated nationally every year, but most employees only get it as a paid day off once every five years, in the so-called lustrum years, and even that depends on the sector agreement.