Working Days in December 2026

December 2026 has 31 calendar days, of which 8 fall at the weekend. It opens on a Tuesday and closes on a Thursday, and contains 4 Mondays — useful to know if your payroll or reporting cut-off lands on a particular weekday.

There are 2 bank holidaysin England & Wales this month: Christmas Day on Friday 25 December, Boxing Day on Monday 28 December. 21 working days remain once these are removed along with the weekends.

December 2026 has the same number of working days as December 2025 (21).

Across the year, December has the fifth-fewest working days of any month in 2026in England & Wales. All three UK regions share the same total of 21 working days this month.

For HR and payroll, the working-day count drives pro-rata pay for anyone starting or leaving part-way through December, and the number of Mondays affects weekly-paid staff and any cut-off tied to the start of the week. For project and finance teams, it sets the realistic capacity for the month before leave is even taken into account.

Working days are counted Monday to Friday, excluding the bank holidays shown above for the region you choose. Scotland and Northern Ireland carry extra holidays — Scotland’s 2nd January, St Andrew’s Day, and an early-August Summer holiday; Northern Ireland’s St Patrick’s Day and Battle of the Boyne — so a UK-wide team can have three different figures for the same month. Use the calculator below to count forwards or backwards from any date in December 2026.