There are 250 working days in New Zealand in 2026, counting Monday to Friday and excluding 11 public holidays that fall on a weekday. That is from 365 calendar days, with 104 weekend days removed.
Working days
250
Mon–Fri, holidays removed
Weekend days
104
Saturdays + Sundays
Weekday holidays
11
0 more fall on weekends
Avg / month
20.8
working days per month
| Month | Days | Weekends | Holidays | Working days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 31 | 9 | 2 | 20 |
| February | 28 | 8 | 1 | 19 |
| March | 31 | 9 | 0 | 22 |
| April | 30 | 8 | 3 | 19 |
| May | 31 | 10 | 0 | 21 |
| June | 30 | 8 | 2 | 20 |
| July | 31 | 8 | 0 | 23 |
| August | 31 | 10 | 0 | 21 |
| September | 30 | 8 | 0 | 22 |
| October | 31 | 9 | 1 | 21 |
| November | 30 | 9 | 0 | 21 |
| December | 31 | 8 | 2 | 21 |
| Total | 365 | 104 | 11 | 250 |
These are the 11 public holidays in New Zealand that land on a weekday in 2026 and therefore remove a working day. Holidays that fall on a weekend are not listed here because they do not change the working-day total.
The 250 working days shown above are the 365 calendar days of 2026, minus the 104 Saturdays and Sundays, minus the 11 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 New Zealand's public holidays. At a standard eight-hour day, 250 working days works out to roughly 2,000 working hours across the year, before any annual leave is taken.
The Holidays Act 2003 defines an otherwise working day for the purpose of public holiday entitlements as any day the employee would have worked but for the holiday. The Employment Relations Act 2000 governs working time generally. The standard private-sector week is Monday to Friday with banks operating Monday to Friday. District Court Rules and High Court Rules treat working day as any day except Saturday, Sunday, public holidays, the period from 25 December to 2 January inclusive and the anniversary day of the locality. Settlement of New Zealand dollar transactions runs on the Reserve Bank's ESAS system.
New Zealand recognises eleven public holidays under the Holidays Act 2003, plus one anniversary day per region observed only in that region. The national list includes New Year's Day and 2 January, Waitangi Day on 6 February, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Anzac Day on 25 April, King's Birthday on the first Monday of June, Matariki at a date set annually by the Matariki Advisory Committee (a Maori lunisolar new year added in 2022), Labour Day on the fourth Monday of October, Christmas Day and Boxing Day. The eleventh anniversary day varies: Auckland observes it on 29 January, Wellington on 22 January, Canterbury on 16 November.
This matters because the working-day total is not spread evenly. Some months in New Zealand 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 20.8 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 New Zealand 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 New Zealand (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.