Public Holidays and Bridge Days

How to use it

1. Choose the Year and the Country. For Germany, also choose the State (Land), because each Land has its own holidays.
2. Read the table of public holidays: the date, the weekday, and the half days and calculated dates marked in the Note column.
3. Read the Bridge days cards. Each one says how many days to take off, how many days the break totals, and which days to leave.
4. Before you book leave, check the official notices: the government may add administrative leave that this page cannot know in advance.

How the bridge days are found

The page scans the holiday data of the chosen country, all years together, so that a bridge at a year end is found too. It looks for runs of working days, of any length, that have a weekend day or a full public holiday on both sides and a full public holiday somewhere in the break. Those working days are the leave. The break is the leave together with the weekend and holiday days around it.

A bridge is listed when the break is at least two days longer than the leave. The list starts with the bridges that give the most break days per leave day; when two are equal, the earlier one comes first.

Break days = leave days + the weekend and holiday days on both sides of them

• A half-day arife is a working day for this purpose: offices close from 13:00, but the day is not a holiday.
• A bridge that would need a day outside 2025 to 2027 is left out, because that day is not in the data.

Half days and administrative leave

In Turkey the arife, the eve of a religious holiday and the afternoon of 28 October, is a half day: public offices close from 13:00. The page counts it as a working day, so a bridge can include it.

The government sometimes adds extra administrative leave (idari izin) to a holiday. Such leave is announced in the Official Gazette (Resmî Gazete) or by official notice. This page cannot know such a decision in advance, so it is not in the lists. Check the notice before you plan your leave.

Where the lists come from

The data covers 2025, 2026 and 2027. The 2027 religious dates are calculated and marked as not yet announced: the moon decides them, so a religious date can move by one day when the official calendar is published.

Each country's list comes from the official sources named below. Turkey uses Law No. 2429 on national and general holidays for the fixed days and the arife, and the Diyanet calendar for the religious dates. The United States follows OPM, the United Kingdom GOV.UK's bank holidays for England and Wales, Germany the Land holiday laws, France the Labour Code and Spain the BOE. The other countries take their holidays from their own laws, decrees and government notices, named in the sources list.

Frequently asked questions