January is the darkest working month of the British year. The solstice has just passed, so the days are lengthening again, but only by a minute or two at first, and sunrise in London still comes after eight o'clock for the first fortnight — later still in Glasgow and Belfast. The coldest stretch of the year usually arrives in the second half of the month, well after the shortest day itself.
Take the weekends out of the 31 days of January 2026 and subtract New Year's Day, and what remains is the working-day count shown above. Scotland comes out one day lower again because of 2 January, which is the first of several points in the year where the four nations of the United Kingdom simply do not agree on how many working days a month contains.
The turn from January into February closes the tax deadline that dominates the second half of the month and lets the calendar breathe. What follows is a month with no bank holiday anywhere in the United Kingdom, a week of half term somewhere in the middle of it, and the first snowdrops in sheltered ground.
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