Public holidays in Switzerland, 2026

Reading these figures

The working day count treats Saturday and Sunday as the weekend, which is the standard working week in Switzerland. Only nationwide holidays are deducted; a date observed in one region alone still counts as a working day here, because a national figure that moved with regional calendars would describe nobody accurately.

The longest working month is July at 23 days; the shortest is May at 20. That spread of 3 days matters for anything billed or accrued monthly, which is why payroll and capacity plans that assume an even year drift by the end of it. The thinnest quarter is Q1, carrying 63 working days across January, February, March.

Compared with 2025, which held 257 working days, 2026 is 1 working day longer. Where a target is carried over from one year to the next unchanged, that difference is absorbed silently unless someone accounts for it.

Against the 204 countries covered here for 2026, Switzerland's 4 nationwide holidays put it below the median of 12, around the 2nd percentile. The range across all countries this year runs from 3 to 49.

The holidays produce 1 break of three consecutive non-working days or more. The longest runs 3 days, from 25 December 2026 to 27 December 2026, built around Christmas Day. A further 2 working days are stranded between a holiday and a weekend, where one day of leave buys a break of four days or more. The full breakdown is here.

1 of this year's holidays sits on a different calendar date than in 2025: Ascension Day. Dates that move cannot be carried forward from last year's planning spreadsheet, which is the most common way a holiday is missed.

Notes on Switzerland

Only one Swiss holiday is federal: National Day on 1 August. Everything else is decided by the
canton, and the spread is wide enough that a national figure is close to meaningless on its own.
Depending on where someone works, the count runs from roughly eight days to fifteen, and the
confessional history of the canton is usually the reason.

Some cantons also observe half days, where the afternoon is free and the morning is not. Those
have no clean representation in a working day count and are not reflected here. If the difference
matters for payroll, work from the cantonal list rather than from this page.

Related

• Long weekends and bridge days in Switzerland 2026
• Working days in Switzerland 2026, month by month
• Count working days between two dates in Switzerland
• Add working days to a date in Switzerland
• Compare Switzerland against another country