There are 261 working days in United Arab Emirates in 2026, counting Monday to Friday and excluding 0 public holidays that fall on a weekday. That is from 365 calendar days, with 104 weekend days removed.
Working days
261
Mon–Fri, holidays removed
Weekend days
104
Saturdays + Sundays
Weekday holidays
0
0 more fall on weekends
Avg / month
21.8
working days per month
Public holiday data for United Arab Emirates in 2026 was not available from the source, so the figures above count weekdays only and do not subtract national holidays. Treat the working-day total as an upper bound.
| Month | Days | Weekends | Holidays | Working days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 31 | 9 | 0 | 22 |
| February | 28 | 8 | 0 | 20 |
| March | 31 | 9 | 0 | 22 |
| April | 30 | 8 | 0 | 22 |
| May | 31 | 10 | 0 | 21 |
| June | 30 | 8 | 0 | 22 |
| July | 31 | 8 | 0 | 23 |
| August | 31 | 10 | 0 | 21 |
| September | 30 | 8 | 0 | 22 |
| October | 31 | 9 | 0 | 22 |
| November | 30 | 9 | 0 | 21 |
| December | 31 | 8 | 0 | 23 |
| Total | 365 | 104 | 0 | 261 |
The 261 working days shown above are the 365 calendar days of 2026, minus the 104 Saturdays and Sundays, minus the 0 public holidays that land on a weekday. Holidays that fall on a Saturday or Sunday are not subtracted, because they do not remove a day anyone would have worked; in 2026 that applies to 0 of United Arab Emirates's public holidays. At a standard eight-hour day, 261 working days works out to roughly 2,088 working hours across the year, before any annual leave is taken.
Federal Decree-Law 33 of 2021 sets a 48-hour standard private-sector week with Saturday and Sunday as the weekend since 2022. Public-sector employees work Monday to Thursday plus Friday morning. Before 2022 the weekend was Friday and Saturday across the economy, a change that aligned UAE working days with Western markets for finance and reduced settlement gaps with London and New York. Banking settlement runs on the Central Bank of the UAE's UAEFTS system, which observes the unified holiday list. The Dubai International Financial Centre and Abu Dhabi Global Market courts use their own Common Law procedural rules with English-style working day definitions.
The United Arab Emirates standardised its private-sector and public-sector holiday calendars in 2022 by Cabinet Resolution 64 of 2022. The list runs to about fourteen days a year depending on the lunar Islamic calendar: Gregorian New Year's Day, Eid Al Fitr (three days), Arafat Day and Eid Al Adha (three days), Islamic New Year, Prophet Muhammad's birthday, Commemoration Day on 1 December, and National Day on 2 and 3 December. Eid dates are confirmed by the UAE's moon-sighting committee only days in advance, so employers cannot publish definitive calendars far ahead. The 2022 reform also shifted the official weekend to Saturday and Sunday with a half-day Friday for the public sector.
This matters because the working-day total is not spread evenly. Some months in United Arab Emirates carry several public holidays while others have none, so the month-by-month table above is the figure to use for payroll runs, billing cycles, SLA windows, and project plans rather than a flat assumption of about 21.8 working days per month. A month with two weekday holidays can have several fewer working days than a clear one, which changes capacity planning and the realistic delivery date for anything scheduled in business days.
To see the individual dates, the day of the week each holiday lands on, and the full official list, open the United Arab Emirates holiday calendar for 2026. You can subscribe to those dates as an .ics feed so they appear in your own calendar, or use the working-days-between-two-dates calculator to count business days for a specific date range rather than the whole year.
Working-day figures are computed from the public holiday list for United Arab Emirates (source: Nager.Date and the national references above) combined with a Monday-to-Friday business week. Regional holidays and substitute-day rules vary; confirm against the official calendar for legal or payroll use.