2026 calendar

2026 opens on a Thursday, which leaves New Year's Day stranded two days short of a weekend and gives England, Wales and Northern Ireland a single day off before the working week resumes. Scotland fares better: 2 January is a bank holiday there as well, and in 2026 it falls on the Friday, so Hogmanay runs into a four-day break north of the border. The self-assessment deadline at the end of the month lands on Saturday 31 January, which extends nothing — the return and the payment are still due that day.

Spring produces an unusual collision. Easter is early, with Good Friday on 3 April and Easter Monday on 6 April, and 6 April is also the first day of the new tax year, so the 2026-27 year begins on a bank holiday in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The year it replaces ends the day before, on Easter Sunday itself. The clocks go forward a week earlier, on 29 March, and Mothering Sunday falls on 15 March, three weeks ahead of Easter as the rule requires.

The May bank holidays fall on the 4th and the 25th, with school half term attached to the later one, and August splits the country as it always does: Monday 3 August in Scotland, Monday 31 August in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland's Battle of the Boyne holiday on 12 July lands on a Sunday and moves to Monday 13 July. The June solstice on the 21st is a Sunday, and in 2026 it happens to be Father's Day as well.

The close of the year is generous. Christmas Day falls on a Friday and Boxing Day on the Saturday, so the second holiday shifts to Monday 28 December and the break runs from Christmas Eve through to the Tuesday. The clocks go back on 25 October, Halloween is a Saturday, Bonfire Night a Thursday, and Remembrance Sunday falls on 8 November with Armistice Day itself on the Wednesday. St Andrew's Day gives Scotland a Monday off on 30 November, and the year runs to 365 days with no leap day in it.