UK bank holidays and the dates coming up

Three years of bank holidays at a glance

Most people plan a year or more ahead: leave requests, weddings, school trips, a long weekend away. The table puts the England and Wales dates for 2026, 2027 and 2028 side by side, so the moving pieces stand out. Easter jumps by more than two weeks from one year to the next, the May and August Mondays drift by a few days, and the Christmas holidays move whenever the 25th or 26th lands at a weekend.

Each year has its own page with the four-nation comparison and a calendar file to download: bank holidays 2026, bank holidays 2027 and bank holidays 2028. Two of the 2028 dates are already substitutes: New Year's Day falls on a Saturday, so the holiday is Monday, 3 January 2028, and in Scotland 2 January follows on the next day. The next bank holiday page keeps a running count of the days left, and the Christmas bank holidays page explains the end-of-year moves in detail.

Four nations, three lists

The United Kingdom has three bank holiday calendars, because England and Wales share one. Scotland keeps 2 January, has its summer holiday at the start of August rather than the end, adds St Andrew's Day on 30 November and does not have Easter Monday as a national bank holiday. Northern Ireland follows England and Wales and adds two days of its own: St Patrick's Day on 17 March and the Battle of the Boyne on 12 July, known as the Twelfth. When either falls at a weekend, the holiday moves to the Monday, as the Twelfth did in 2026.

In Scotland the national list matters less than elsewhere. Banks follow it, but many councils, schools and employers set local holidays of their own, often a spring Monday around Easter and an autumn Monday in September or October, which differ from town to town. The Scotland page and the Northern Ireland page give each nation's dates with these differences spelt out. The simulator compares Scotland with England and Wales for any year from 2026 to 2030.

Why every date here is computed, then checked

Lists of dates are easy to copy and easy to get wrong. A list prepared before a proclamation can miss a moved day, and a list copied forward a year keeps last year's Easter. The dates on this site come from the rules that produce them, written as code: the days named in Schedule 1 to the Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971, the days the Crown appoints every year under section 1 of that Act, the St Andrew's Day Bank Holiday (Scotland) Act 2007, and one simple procedure for substitute days. A day that falls on a weekday stays put; each day that falls at a weekend then moves, in calendar order, to the next weekday that is not already a holiday.

That procedure was then run against the official record. GOV.UK publishes its bank holiday list as data, for 2019 to 2028, for each of the three calendars. The site's tests compare the rule with that list, year by year and nation by nation, and the two agree on every day except the ones a rule cannot know in advance: VE Day moved to a Friday in 2020, the Platinum Jubilee days and the state funeral of 2022, the coronation in 2023 and the World Cup holiday in Scotland on 15 June 2026. Those are named in the tests one by one.

This is what lets the site show 2029 and 2030 honestly. Where GOV.UK has published a year, you see its list. Where it has not, you see what the rules give, marked as expected, with the reason: until the King signs the year's proclamation, nobody can promise a date, and a special event can still add a day. For 2027, the proclamation was made on 8 July 2026, appointing New Year's Day, the early May holiday and Tuesday, 28 December 2027 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and 12 July 2027 in Northern Ireland, all exactly where the rule had put them.

The substitute days page walks through the procedure with examples, and its simulator finds the substitute for any holiday and year.

The clocks

Clock changes are set by Act of Parliament. Since the Summer Time Order 2002, British Summer Time begins at 1am GMT on the last Sunday in March and ends at 1am GMT on the last Sunday in October. In 2026 the clocks went back on Sunday, 25 October 2026; in 2027 they go forward on Sunday, 28 March 2027 and back on Sunday, 31 October 2027, the latest date the rule allows. Summer time lasts 217 days in 2027. The clocks go back and clocks go forward pages count down to the exact hour; British Summer Time explains GMT, BST and UTC, and why the whole of Europe changes on the same weekend.

Easter moves half of spring

Easter Sunday can fall on any date from 22 March to 25 April, and five other dates move with it: Pancake Day, Ash Wednesday, Mothering Sunday, Good Friday and Easter Monday. In 2027 Easter is early, on Sunday, 28 March 2027, so Mothering Sunday comes on 7 March 2027 and Pancake Day as early as 9 February 2027. In 2028 everything moves almost three weeks later, with Easter on 16 April 2028 and Pancake Day on 29 February 2028, a leap day. The rule, written into the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750, ties Easter to the first Sunday after the ecclesiastical full moon on or after 21 March. The Easter page explains it and gives every year to 2035; Mother's Day and Pancake Day have their own countdowns, and Ash Wednesday and Lent counts the forty days.

Mother's Day in the UK is Mothering Sunday, the fourth Sunday of Lent in the Church of England calendar, which is why it falls in March or early April and not in May as in the United States. Father's Day, by contrast, follows the American custom of the third Sunday in June.

Counting working days

Notice periods, delivery promises, payment terms and many deadlines are written in working days. A working day is a Monday to Friday that is not a bank holiday, and the bank holidays depend on the nation. December is the month that catches people out: in 2026, England and Wales lose 25 December 2026 and 28 December 2026, so a ten-working-day delivery ordered in mid-December arrives in January. A whole year has 253 working days in England and Wales in 2027, against 252 in Scotland. The working days calculator counts between two dates or adds a number of working days, with the bank holidays of the nation you choose; the simulator below gives the working days of any month from 2026 to 2028.

Other dates people ask about

Some dates are customs rather than law, and still move every year. Father's Day is the third Sunday in June. Remembrance Sunday is the second Sunday in November, with the National Service at the Cenotaph at 11am. Black Friday follows the American Thanksgiving, on the fourth Thursday of November. Bonfire Night and Burns Night keep their dates but change weekday. Ramadan moves about eleven days earlier each year, and in the UK its first day is confirmed only by the sighting of the new moon, so the page gives the expected dates and says so. The days until counter works for any date you type, a birthday, a wedding or the first day of a new job.

Each of these pages has its own countdown, its rule, the dates for the coming years and a calendar file. None of them asks for your email or sends anything you enter: the counting happens on your device, with your device's clock, in your own time zone. School term dates are set by each council and academy trust and are not covered here.

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