Is today a bank holiday?

What happens when a bank holiday falls on a weekend?

When a scheduled bank holiday falls on a Saturday or Sunday, it isn't simply lost. A substitute weekday — normally the following Monday — becomes the bank holiday instead. Gov.uk states this directly: if a bank holiday lands on a weekend, a "substitute" weekday becomes the bank holiday, normally the following Monday.

This isn't just convention — it has a statutory basis. The Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971 gives the Crown power to cancel a scheduled bank holiday where it would be "inexpedient" that year and appoint another day in its place, and the Act's own schedule of dates is written with weekends in mind — Boxing Day, for example, is defined in the Act as a bank holiday "if it be not a Sunday". A separate power in the same Act is what's used to proclaim one-off extra bank holidays for a national occasion — as happened for the Platinum Jubilee in 2022 and the coronation of King Charles III in 2023.

Christmas Day and Boxing Day are handled together, so when Christmas Day falls at a weekend, both the Christmas Day and Boxing Day substitute holidays shift — neither one is lost. New Year's Day works the same way. Use the checker above, or the full bank holiday calendar, to see exactly which dates apply in a given year.

How bank holidays differ across the UK

England and Wales share exactly the same list of bank holidays. Northern Ireland uses that list as its starting point and adds to it. Scotland's list isn't just longer — it's genuinely different.

England and Wales

England and Wales observe 8 bank holidays a year: New Year's Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, the early May bank holiday, the spring bank holiday, the summer bank holiday (the last Monday in August), Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

Scotland

Scotland does not observe Easter Monday at all. Instead, Scotland has 2 January (a bank holiday in its own right, the day after New Year's Day) and St Andrew's Day (30 November), and its summer bank holiday falls on the first Monday in August rather than the last. That normally gives Scotland 9 bank holidays a year, though an extra one-off day is sometimes proclaimed for a national occasion — Scotland had a World Cup bank holiday on 15 June 2026, for example.

Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland keeps the full England & Wales list, including Easter Monday, and adds two of its own: St Patrick's Day (17 March) and the Battle of the Boyne, also called Orangemen's Day (12 July) — giving Northern Ireland the most bank holidays of any UK nation, typically 10 a year.

See the full bank holiday calendar for a year-by-year breakdown of every date in all three lists.

Do you get the day off, or paid extra, for a bank holiday?

There's no statutory right in the UK to have a bank holiday off work, or to be paid extra for working one. The Working Time Regulations 1998 — the law that creates your statutory annual leave — doesn't mention bank holidays at all. Whether you get them as paid time off, extra pay for working, both or neither is entirely down to what your contract says.

What the law does guarantee is 5.6 weeks of paid annual leave a year, capped at 28 days for a standard 5-day week. Employers are free to structure that 28-day minimum around bank holidays however they choose: some give all of a nation's bank holidays on top of a separate leave allowance; others count bank holidays as part of the 28 days, leaving fewer days for staff to book freely. Both arrangements are lawful — check your contract or staff handbook to see which applies to you.

Upcoming bank holidays

The next bank holiday for each UK nation, worked out live from our bank holiday dataset:

For the complete list of dates through to 2028, see the full UK bank holiday calendar, or go straight to the 2027 bank holidays.

Frequently asked questions