Federal holidays and their observed dates

Federal holidays year by year

Year20262027202820292030

Holidays observed on another day

3

Saturday holidays, off the Friday before	2
Sunday holidays, off the Monday after	1
Working days in 2027	249

Juneteenth National Independence Day, Independence Day, Christmas Day

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The 11 federal holidays of 2026

The list below gives each holiday's legal date and the day federal offices close, as published by the Office of Personnel Management. Only one date differs this year.

6 holidays are tied to a weekday by law rather than to a date. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday is the third Monday of January, Washington's Birthday the third Monday of February, Memorial Day the last Monday of May, Labor Day the first Monday of September, Columbus Day the second Monday of October, and Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday of November. Those never need to be moved. The 5 date-based holidays rotate through the week from one year to the next, which is why 2026 has 1 shifted observance and 2027 has 3.

The weekend rule and the 2027 dates

The observed-date rule is written for federal employees with a Monday to Friday workweek. A holiday on a Saturday becomes a Friday off; a holiday on a Sunday becomes a Monday off. Employers outside government may copy the rule, but nothing obliges them to, and some simply let a weekend holiday pass. The rule is also why the first day of a year can be observed in the year before: New Year's Day 2028 is a Saturday, so it is observed on December 31, 2027.

The 2027 dates above are computed from the fixed and weekday rules with the same weekend shift, not copied from an OPM page; check the official list once OPM publishes it. With 3 holidays falling on a weekend, 2027 hands federal employees three Fridays or Mondays off that differ from the calendar date, and the working days calculator counts the effect month by month for either year.

Holidays and pay in the private sector

For most private-sector workers the federal list is a reference, not an entitlement. Whether a holiday is a paid day off, an unpaid day off or an ordinary workday depends on the employer's policy or a contract. On pay, Fact Sheet #23 is direct: the FLSA does not require extra pay for work on Saturdays, Sundays or holidays as such. Holiday hours simply join the workweek total, and only hours past 40 are overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act. A week with five eight-hour days, one of them on a holiday, plus six hours on Saturday makes 46 hours: 6 of them overtime at $28.50, for $931.00 at $19 an hour.

Holidays also move paydays and deadlines. A Friday payday on July 3, 2026 or on Christmas Day is paid the business day before on the schedule this site uses, as the biweekly pay schedule shows, and the business days calculator skips observed holidays when it counts toward a due date.