Federal Holidays and Business Days, 2026–2027

The 11 federal holidays

Federal law, 5 U.S.C. 6103, sets 11 legal public holidays:

Six of them always fall on a Monday or, for Thanksgiving, a Thursday. The other five have fixed dates, so some years they land on a weekend.

The names above are the ones in the law. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) notes, for Washington’s Birthday, that state and local governments and private businesses may use other names, and that it always uses the legal ones. Inauguration Day, January 20 every fourth year, is a holiday only for federal employees in the Washington, DC, area. The next one, January 20, 2029, is a Saturday, and OPM says it will not be observed on another day.

The observed-date rule

For federal employees who work Monday to Friday:

• A holiday on a Saturday is observed on the Friday before. This comes from 5 U.S.C. 6103(b).
• A holiday on a Sunday is observed on the Monday after. OPM applies this under Executive Order 11582.

Employees on other schedules have their own in-lieu-of rules, which OPM explains. For business-day counting, the Monday-to-Friday rule is the one that matters.

2026 and 2027 dates

These are the observed dates from OPM’s holiday schedules. Shifted dates are marked with the actual date.

The December 31, 2027 trap

January 1, 2028 falls on a Saturday, so the observed New Year’s Day is Friday, December 31, 2027. OPM lists it in its 2028 schedule, but the day off happens in 2027.

That has three effects people miss:

• Calendar year 2027 has 12 observed federal holidays, and calendar year 2028 has only 10, with no New Year’s Day holiday in January.
• Late December 2027 has two Friday holidays in a row: Christmas on Friday, December 24, and New Year’s on Friday, December 31. On OPM’s calendar, December 2027 has 21 business days.
• Counting across New Year’s changes. One business day after Thursday, December 30, 2027 is Monday, January 3, 2028, not Friday, December 31.

Any calendar or spreadsheet that simply drops January 1 from each year will get 2027 and 2028 wrong. The same count changes a year’s working hours: on OPM’s calendar at 8 hours a day, 2026 has 250 working days and 2,000 hours, while 2027 has 249 working days and 1,992 hours.

Do private employers have to follow them?

No federal law requires a private employer to close, give these days off or pay for them. The Department of Labor says the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) does not require payment for time not worked, such as vacations or holidays, and treats those benefits as a matter of agreement between employer and employee.

Working on a holiday is not overtime by itself under the FLSA. Fact Sheet #23 says the law does not require overtime pay for work on Saturdays, Sundays, holidays or regular days of rest, as such. Overtime still depends on hours over 40 in the workweek. The guide on holiday and weekend overtime covers how paid holidays and holiday premiums fit in. State laws and employment contracts can add rules; this guide covers the federal calendar only.

Banks are a separate calendar. The Federal Reserve’s holiday schedule follows the same holidays but handles Saturdays differently: when a holiday falls on a Saturday, the Federal Reserve Banks stay open on the Friday before, while a Sunday holiday closes them the following Monday. The Federal Reserve lists July 3, 2026, June 18, 2027, December 24, 2027 and December 31, 2027 as days the Reserve Banks are open, and July 5, 2027 as closed. If a payday or a deposit deadline depends on bank processing, check with your payroll provider or bank rather than assuming the federal-employee calendar.

How to count business days

A business day here means a Monday through Friday that is not an observed federal holiday, using OPM’s observed dates for federal employees. The business days calculator uses the same calendar. Bank business days can differ: the Federal Reserve Banks are open on December 24 and December 31, 2027, so a bank count for December 2027, or one business day after December 30, 2027, comes out differently. Before you count, settle two things: whether the start date counts, and whether the end date counts. A deadline of a set number of business days after a date usually counts forward from the next day, but the rule that sets the deadline decides.

1. Start the day after the start date (unless the rule says the start date counts).
2. Skip Saturdays and Sundays.
3. Skip each observed federal holiday, using the observed date, not the actual one.
4. Skip any extra days your workplace or the deadline’s rule says are closed, such as a company holiday.
5. Count until you reach N. That day is the deadline.

Worked examples with the 2026–2027 dates, on OPM’s calendar:

If your business counts Saturday as a business day, the count changes: 30 business days after November 23, 2026 then lands on Wednesday, December 30, 2026.

Next step

Count business days between two dates, or add business days to a date, with the business days calculator. It skips weekends and observed federal holidays for 2025 through 2029 and lists every holiday it skipped. For a year’s working hours, use work hours in a year.