UK Bank Holidays

A bank holiday is a day the financial and commercial system treats as closed. The framework comes from the Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971, which names the standard holidays and lets the government add one-off days — such as the 2022 Platinum Jubilee, the 2022 State Funeral, and the 2023 Coronation — by royal proclamation. It is not, despite the common assumption, an automatic right to a paid day off: whether you get the day depends on your employment contract.

The UK does not run a single calendar. England & Wales observes eight bank holidays in a normal year. Scotland swaps Easter Monday for 2nd January and St Andrew’s Day, and moves the Summer holiday to the first Monday in August. Northern Ireland keeps the full England & Wales list and adds St Patrick’s Day and the Battle of the Boyne, giving it the most holidays of the three. For anyone counting deadlines or running payroll across the UK, that means the same year can produce three different working-day totals.

When a fixed-date holiday — New Year’s Day, Christmas Day, or Boxing Day — falls at a weekend, a substitute day is created on the next available weekday. The substitute, not the original date, is the one that counts for pay and contractual purposes, so it pays to check it. Every table on these pages flags substitute days, and the dates come straight from the official gov.uk bank holidays feed.

For the full background — the law, the regional differences, the substitute-day rule, and what bank holidays mean for time off and pay — read our guide, UK bank holidays explained. To count working days around any of these dates, use the working days calculator.

Each year page lists every bank holiday for all three regions side by side, with substitute days marked and the long weekends highlighted — useful when you are planning leave, deadlines, or a delivery programme. The region pages focus on Scotland and Northern Ireland, explaining how and why they differ from England & Wales and listing their dates for the current year.

If you only need a count rather than a list — how many working days in a month or a year, or how many lie between two dates — the working-days-in-year pages and the days-between-dates tool do the arithmetic for you.