England has eight bank holidays in 2026 — the same calendar as Wales, and one fewer than Northern Ireland (which adds St Patrick’s Day and the Battle of the Boyne holiday) but one more than Scotland skips Easter Monday for.
The full list
| Date | Day | Holiday |
|---|---|---|
| 1 January | Thursday | New Year’s Day |
| 3 April | Friday | Good Friday |
| 6 April | Monday | Easter Monday |
| 4 May | Monday | Early May Bank Holiday |
| 25 May | Monday | Spring Bank Holiday |
| 31 August | Monday | Summer Bank Holiday |
| 25 December | Friday | Christmas Day |
| 28 December | Monday | Boxing Day (substitute) |
Boxing Day itself falls on Saturday 26 December, so the substitute holiday moves to Monday 28 December — the only substitution needed anywhere in England’s 2026 calendar.
The long weekends worth planning around
- Easter, 3–6 April: a genuine four-day weekend, since Good Friday and Easter Monday bookend it.
- Early May, 4 May: a standard three-day weekend, but close enough to Easter that some people bridge the gap with a single day of annual leave.
- Spring Bank Holiday, 25 May: usually lines up with school half-term, so it’s the busiest of the three-day weekends for domestic travel.
- Christmas, 25–28 December: effectively a four-day break, and many employers close the office entirely between Christmas and New Year, meaning a few days of annual leave around 29–31 December can stretch it into a nine- or ten-day break.
A quirk worth knowing
England (like Scotland) has no bank holiday tied to its patron saint. St George’s Day, 23 April, isn’t a bank holiday, unlike Northern Ireland’s St Patrick’s Day or Scotland’s St Andrew’s Day — it’s occasionally proposed in Parliament but has never been adopted. Eight is also on the low end by international standards: most EU countries observe 10–14 public holidays a year, which is part of why UK bank holidays feel disproportionately valuable when they land on a weekday.
Employer obligations
Bank holidays aren’t a separate legal entitlement in England — they can be counted as part of your 5.6 weeks’ statutory annual leave, or given on top of it, entirely depending on your contract. If you’re required to work a bank holiday, there’s no automatic right to extra pay unless your contract specifies it (though many employers do offer time-and-a-half, double pay, or a day in lieu as standard practice).
For the same calendar with a Wales-specific angle, see our Wales bank holidays 2026 guide; for the full four-nation comparison, see 2026 bank holidays UK.