New Year’s Day, Thursday 1 January 2026, is a bank holiday across the whole UK. Scotland then gets a second consecutive day off — Friday 2 January — that the rest of the UK doesn’t.
The dates
| Date | Day | Where |
|---|---|---|
| 1 January | Thursday | All UK nations |
| 2 January | Friday | Scotland only |
Because both dates fall Thursday and Friday, Scotland effectively gets a four-day weekend at the very start of the year without touching any annual leave, while England, Wales and Northern Ireland get a three-day weekend if a single day of leave is taken on the Friday.
Why Scotland’s calendar differs here
The 2 January holiday is one of the clearest markers of how Scottish and English New Year traditions diverged historically. Hogmanay — New Year’s Eve — has long been treated as the primary midwinter celebration in Scotland, arguably more culturally significant than Christmas Day itself in earlier centuries, when Christmas wasn’t even a public holiday in Scotland until 1958. The 2 January holiday exists essentially to give a second day of recovery and celebration that a single 1 January holiday doesn’t provide.
Edinburgh’s Hogmanay street party is the best-known public event built around this — running from 31 December into the early hours, with the extra bank holiday meaning the city (and much of the country) doesn’t need to return to normal business the next morning.
Practical notes
As with all bank holidays, being paid for 1 or 2 January depends on your contract rather than any automatic legal right — check whether bank holidays are included within or additional to your statutory annual leave entitlement. Public transport typically runs a reduced, Sunday-style timetable on both dates, and most retail, government and financial services close entirely.
For the Christmas period immediately before this, see our Christmas 2026 bank holidays guide; for the full four-nation comparison, see 2026 bank holidays UK.