Which countries have the most public holidays in 2026?
35 countries, ranked by the public holidays that actually give people a day off: nationwide only, and counted on the weekday they fall on. Japan leads with 16 of 16; the average across the list is 9.1.
The ranking
The middle column is the one that matters. A holiday that lands on a Saturday is a holiday on paper and an ordinary weekend in practice, unless the country moves it — and the countries that do move theirs are the ones with no losses at all.
| # | Country | On a working day | Total | Lost to a weekend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Japan | 16 | 16 | — |
| 2 | Iceland | 13 | 16 | 3 |
| 3 | Brazil | 12 | 14 | 2 |
| 4 | Romania | 11 | 16 | 5 |
| 5 | Slovakia | 11 | 15 | 4 |
| 6 | Denmark | 11 | 14 | 3 |
| 7 | Czechia | 11 | 13 | 2 |
| 8 | New Zealand | 11 | 11 | — |
| 9 | United States | 11 | 11 | — |
| 10 | Sweden | 10 | 16 | 6 |
| 11 | Austria | 10 | 15 | 5 |
| 12 | Belgium | 10 | 14 | 4 |
| 13 | Greece | 10 | 14 | 4 |
| 14 | Portugal | 10 | 14 | 4 |
| 15 | Russia | 10 | 14 | 4 |
| 16 | Turkey | 10 | 14 | 4 |
| 17 | South Africa | 10 | 12 | 2 |
| 18 | Ireland | 10 | 11 | 1 |
| 19 | Finland | 9 | 15 | 6 |
| 20 | Croatia | 9 | 14 | 5 |
| 21 | France | 9 | 11 | 2 |
| 22 | Serbia | 9 | 11 | 2 |
| 23 | Mexico | 9 | 9 | — |
| 24 | Poland | 8 | 14 | 6 |
| 25 | Hungary | 8 | 13 | 5 |
| 26 | Norway | 8 | 12 | 4 |
| 27 | Netherlands | 8 | 11 | 3 |
| 28 | Canada | 8 | 8 | — |
| 29 | Italy | 7 | 13 | 6 |
| 30 | Spain | 7 | 10 | 3 |
| 31 | Germany | 7 | 9 | 2 |
| 32 | Australia | 6 | 6 | — |
| 33 | United Kingdom | 6 | 6 | — |
| 34 | Switzerland | 3 | 4 | 1 |
| 35 | India | 2 | 3 | 1 |
What the bottom of the table is really telling you
India finishes last with 2, and that is a fact about lawmaking rather than about how hard anyone works. Switzerland sets nearly every holiday by canton, Spain by autonomous community, and the United Kingdom's bank holidays differ between England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. A resident of Zurich or Barcelona gets a good many days off — they are simply not national ones, so an honest national ranking cannot count them.
India is the extreme case: three holidays are gazetted nationally and everything else is decided by state or by religion, from a long list employees choose a few from. Counting that list would make India first by a distance and would describe nobody's actual year.
The weekend tax
In 2026 the heaviest loss falls on Sweden: 6 of its 16 nationwide holidays land on a Saturday or Sunday and are not moved. 7 countries lose none at all — some because the dates happen to fall well this year, others because they shift a holiday to the following Monday whenever it lands at a weekend. The United States and the United Kingdom both do the latter, which is why their counts stay stable year after year.
This is also why the same country moves up and down these rankings between years. The holidays do not change; the weekdays do.
How this was counted
- Nationwide public holidays only, from the same data the calendars on this site print.
- Dates as officially observed — where a holiday is moved because it fell at a weekend, the moved date is the one counted.
- A date listed twice by the source counts once: some countries pair a civic and a religious holiday on one day, which is still one day off.
- Only the 35 countries with holiday data on this site are ranked; it is not a world ranking.
Related
- Countries with the most long weekends 2026
- Working days by country 2026
- Working days in the United States 2026
- Printable calendars