Working Days in May 2026

May 2026 has 31 calendar days, of which 10 fall at the weekend. It opens on a Friday and closes on a Sunday, 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: Early May bank holiday on Monday 4 May, Spring bank holiday on Monday 25 May. 19 working days remain once these are removed along with the weekends.

That is 1 fewer working day than May 2025, which had 20. The shift is down to which weekday the month starts on and whether a movable holiday like Easter lands inside it.

Across the year, May has the fewest working days of any month in 2026in England & Wales — it is one of the lightest months, so build in extra slack for anything time-critical. All three UK regions share the same total of 19 working days this month.

For HR and payroll, the working-day count drives pro-rata pay for anyone starting or leaving part-way through May, 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 May 2026.