Public holidays for distributed teams — a 2026 calendar

Quick answer

If you only have time for the headline, here are the six holidays that will quietly break a US-led distributed team in 2026. These are the ones that catch people every year because the calendar entry says one thing and the office closure says another.

The rest of this guide is the full calendar by region, the patterns that explain why holidays cluster the way they do, and a playbook for running on-call and deadlines across all of it. Skip to your region or read top to bottom.

United States 2026 — eleven federal holidays

The US has eleven federal holidays. Federal holidays close banks, federal offices, and bond markets. Most private-sector employers observe nine to ten of them, with Columbus Day and Veterans Day being the most commonly skipped. State holidays vary, but the federal list is what you build calendars against.

The key rule is the observed-on-Monday convention. When a federal holiday falls on a Saturday, it is observed on the preceding Friday. When it falls on a Sunday, it is observed on the following Monday. In 2026, Independence Day (July 4) falls on a Saturday, so the observed federal holiday is Friday, July 3. Boxing Day equivalents do not exist in the US, but Christmas Day (Friday December 25) and New Year's Day (Thursday January 1) both land cleanly on weekdays this year.

The full US holiday list with state-level additions is at /holidays/us. The page includes the iCal feed so you can subscribe once and never manually update again.

UK and Ireland 2026 — bank holidays and the observed-on-Monday trap

The UK has eight bank holidays in England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland differ slightly (Scotland gets January 2 and St Andrew's Day; Northern Ireland gets St Patrick's Day and the Battle of the Boyne). The observed-on-Monday rule is firmer here than in the US: when Christmas or Boxing Day falls on a weekend, the bank holiday is reliably shifted, and most non-essential businesses close.

The trap in 2026 is the December cluster. Christmas Day is Friday December 25. Boxing Day is Saturday December 26. Because Boxing Day falls on a Saturday, the substitute bank holiday is Monday December 28. UK offices are closed Friday, then the weekend, then Monday. That is a four-day shutdown. Most UK businesses then keep a skeleton crew through Tuesday December 29 and Wednesday December 30, with Thursday December 31 being a quiet half-day. Effectively the UK is unreachable from Christmas Eve to January 4.

Full list with Scotland and Northern Ireland variants at /holidays/gb. Ireland-specific at /holidays/ie.

Continental Europe 2026 — varies dramatically by country and region

Continental Europe is where naive global calendars fall apart. Germany has nine federal holidays plus a varying number set by each Land (state). Bavaria observes thirteen public holidays; Berlin observes ten; the gap is real. France has eleven national holidays. Spain layers seventeen national, regional, and local days that vary by autonomous community. Italy has twelve plus city-specific patron saint days. The Netherlands runs leaner with around ten.

The cross-cutting truth is the Easter cluster. Good Friday (April 3, 2026) and Easter Monday (April 6, 2026) close roughly 95% of Christian-tradition countries across Europe — Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Poland, Czech Republic, the Nordics. France is the notable exception: Good Friday is only a holiday in Alsace-Moselle, and Easter Monday is national. If you are running a campaign or deadline in early April 2026, build around the cluster, not through it.

Country-specific lists with regional variants at /holidays/de, /holidays/fr, /holidays/it, /holidays/es, and /holidays/nl.

Latin America 2026 — Carnival, regional saints, and the September cluster

Latin America has two patterns to know. The first is Carnival, which is genuinely Brazil-specific in scale but observed in some form across the region. The second is the September independence cluster: Brazil (Sep 7), Mexico (Sep 16), Chile (Sep 18), Costa Rica (Sep 15), Guatemala (Sep 15), Honduras (Sep 15). If you are running campaigns across LATAM in September, plan around three separate week-long disruptions.

Mexico runs leaner than most of LATAM: officially seven mandatory holidays plus several optional days. The trap is Día de Muertos (November 1-2), which is not a statutory holiday but is observed in practice — offices empty out. Brazil layers national, state, and municipal holidays heavily. São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro state holidays add roughly four extra days each on top of the national list.

Country lists at /holidays/br, /holidays/mx, and /holidays/ar.

Asia-Pacific 2026 — Golden Week, Lunar New Year, and seventeen Japanese holidays

Asia-Pacific is the region most likely to surprise an English-speaking team because the holidays are not derived from Christian or US civic calendars. Japan has seventeen national holidays, more than the UK, US, Germany, or France. India has three national holidays plus dozens of regional and religious days; Holi (March 3, 2026) and Diwali (November 8, 2026) close offices effectively even where they are not statutory. China shuts for Lunar New Year (February 16-22, 2026 — actually shifted by the State Council to a longer holiday cluster each year).

The single most disruptive item for foreign teams is Japan's Golden Week. In 2026 Showa Day (April 29), Constitution Day (May 3), Greenery Day (May 4), and Children's Day (May 5) form a cluster, with May 6 observed as a substitute because May 3 falls on a Sunday. Most Japanese companies close for the entire week of April 27 to May 8. Treat Japan as unreachable that fortnight.

Detailed country pages: /holidays/jp, /holidays/cn, /holidays/in, /holidays/sg, and /holidays/au.

Regional patterns — clusters that explain everything

If you internalise five patterns, you do not need to memorise the individual dates. These are the structural clusters that shape distributed-team scheduling.

The Easter cluster (April 3 – April 6, 2026). Good Friday and Easter Monday close roughly 95% of Christian-tradition countries simultaneously. UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Poland, most of LATAM. The US does not observe either, which makes US teams the most common offenders for scheduling launches or campaigns into this window. If your product depends on European engineering or LATAM ops, ship the Tuesday before or the Tuesday after, not in the middle.

The Lunar New Year shift (February 2026). Lunar New Year falls February 17, 2026. China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, South Korea, and parts of Indonesia and the Philippines all observe it in some form. Mainland China shuts for at least a week, often longer. Vietnam (Tết) extends to roughly nine days. This collides with Brazil Carnival (Feb 16-17) and US Presidents Day (Feb 16), giving you a global trough mid-February.

Ramadan working hours (Feb 17 – Mar 19, 2026). Ramadan is not a single holiday but a month of reduced working hours across Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Office hours typically shift to around 9 AM to 3 PM. Friday becomes effectively a half day even where it is normally full. Eid al-Fitr (around March 19-22, 2026) closes everything for three to five days.

Golden Week and Obon (Japan). Japan has two structural shutdowns: Golden Week (late April to early May) and Obon (mid-August). Neither has the full weight of a single national holiday but both are observed in practice. If you have a Japanese counterparty, do not schedule launches, decisions, or escalations during either window.

The mid-August European disappearance. France, Italy, Spain, and much of Germany take three to four weeks off in August. The legal holiday is Assumption Day (Saturday August 15, 2026), but the cultural pattern is broader. Paris empties out. Italian small businesses literally lock the doors. If you are running anything time-sensitive into Continental Europe in August, build it for July or September.

The Christmas-to-New-Year window. December 24 to January 2 is a global wash. The US, UK, EU, Australia, New Zealand, most of LATAM, Japan, and South Korea all have substantial shutdowns. The exceptions are mainland China, the Middle East, India (for the most part), and parts of Africa. If you need work done globally in late December, route it through Mumbai or Beijing, not Berlin.

Playbook for distributed teams

Six concrete practices that turn this calendar into a working system. None of them are revolutionary; the difference is doing them consistently.

Mandate a single shared holiday calendar. One subscription that every employee has, covering every country your team operates in. Not just the countries they live in. The Berlin engineer needs to see the São Paulo holidays because they handle the LATAM region. Use iCal feeds so updates propagate automatically.

Bake observed-on-Monday rules into your deadline planning. If a deadline lands in the week of December 28, push it to January 5 by default. If a deadline lands in the week of Australia Day, Memorial Day, or any UK bank holiday Monday, push it by one day. Most project tools do not understand observed days automatically — train your PMs to spot them.

Communicate cutoffs two weeks ahead. Before any major holiday cluster — Easter, Golden Week, Christmas — send a single message that says: "This is the last week we ship X. Anything not in by Friday will land after the cluster. Plan accordingly." Two weeks is the right lead time. One week is too late; three weeks gets ignored.

Cover regional holidays explicitly in on-call rotations. On-call rotations should name the holidays they cover and the holidays they do not. "PagerDuty schedule X covers the US engineer's Memorial Day" is the level of specificity required. The default assumption (the EU engineer covers US holidays, the US engineer covers EU holidays) is too coarse and fails when both teams have a holiday in the same week (Golden Week + early May UK bank holiday, for example).

Pre-schedule follow-the-sun handoffs around clusters. Two weeks before Golden Week starts, agree which work hands off to which region. Same for the Christmas window. The mistake is leaving handoffs to be improvised on the Monday of week one. Do the handoff meeting in advance.

Plan around the four-week DST drift, too. See our DST 2026 survival guide for the four weeks a year when the gap between US and UK is one hour off the standard. Holiday planning and DST planning are the same job — both are calendar hygiene that prevents quiet failures.

Tools and lookups

Cross-references for the things you will actually look up while reading this guide.

• United States holidays — federal plus state-by-state extras, iCal feed.
• UK bank holidays — England and Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland.
• Germany holidays — national plus Land variants (Bavaria, Berlin, Saxony, etc.).
• Japan holidays — all 17 national days plus Golden Week and Obon notes.
• India holidays — national plus regional plus religious.
• Brazil holidays — national plus São Paulo and Rio state-level.
• Australia holidays — national plus state-by-state (NSW, VIC, QLD differ).
• Working days calculator — count business days between two dates, accounting for holidays in any country.
• Best cities for remote work — if you are planning where to base team members, the holiday calendar is part of the picture.
• Meeting scheduler — overlap finder that respects holidays in selected countries.

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