Public Holidays Ireland 2026 and 2027: Dates and Who Gets the Day Off or Extra Pay

Public holidays Ireland 2026: there are 10 – New Year's Day (Thursday 1 January), St Brigid's Day (Monday 2 February), St Patrick's Day (Tuesday 17 March), Easter Monday (6 April), the May, June and August bank holidays (4 May, 1 June, 3 August), the October bank holiday (26 October), Christmas Day (Friday 25 December) and St Stephen's Day (Saturday 26 December). Good Friday is not one of them.

For an employer, the dates are the easy part. Each of those 10 days gives every qualifying employee a benefit under the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997, section 21 – a paid day off, an extra day of annual leave or an extra day's pay – and the right answer changes with each person's working pattern. Part-timers, weekend staff and anyone rostered on the day all need a different calculation, and St Stephen's Day 2026 falls on a Saturday.

Public holidays Ireland 2026: the full list

These are the dates published by Citizens Information and the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC). Six of the ten fall on a Monday.

St Brigid's Day became the tenth public holiday in 2023. Under S.I. No. 50 of 2022 it is the first Monday in February, unless 1 February is a Friday – then the Friday is the holiday. That exception next applies in 2030.

Public holidays in Ireland 2027

Citizens Information already lists the 2027 dates. Two things stand out: St Brigid's Day is on 1 February itself (a Monday), and both Christmas Day and St Stephen's Day fall at the weekend.

For a Monday-to-Friday business that means 9 holidays on working days in 2026 but only 8 in 2027. The two weekend holidays at Christmas 2027 still have to be "paid for" with one of the benefits below.

Is Good Friday a public holiday?

No. Good Friday (3 April 2026 and 26 March 2027) is a normal working day, and employees have no automatic right to time off. Christmas Eve is not a public holiday either – neither appears in the list in the Second Schedule to the Act.

The confusion often comes from bank calendars. Danske Bank's 2026 list, for example, includes Good Friday and 28–29 December, because payments are not processed on those days. That affects your payroll run, not your staff's entitlements. If you close on Good Friday, decide in advance whether it is a paid company day or a day of annual leave.

What employees are entitled to on a public holiday

For each public holiday, a qualifying employee gets one of four benefits, and the employer decides which:

1. a paid day off on the day;
2. a paid day off within a month of the day;
3. an extra day of annual leave;
4. an extra day's pay.

An employee can ask, at least 21 days before the holiday, which one will apply. If you don't answer at least 14 days before, the law decides for you: the holiday itself becomes the paid day off – or, if it falls on a day the person doesn't work, an extra day's pay (section 21(3)).

The rates come from S.I. No. 475 of 1997. In practice:

There is no statutory "double time" for working a bank holiday – the only legal extra is the public holiday benefit itself, often given as an extra day's pay. Pay for variable earners is averaged over the 13 weeks before the holiday. An employee who leaves in the week ending the day before a public holiday, having worked the previous 4 weeks, is still owed an extra day's pay (section 23(2)).

Part-time staff and the 40-hour rule

Full-time employees qualify from day one. Everyone else qualifies only if they have worked at least 40 hours for you in the 5 weeks ending on the day before the public holiday (section 21(4)). Annual leave and public holiday time off count as time worked for this test (section 22(2)).

The window moves with each holiday. For Christmas Day 2026 it runs from Friday 20 November to Thursday 24 December. A new part-timer who starts on Monday 14 December on three 5-hour shifts a week has only 30 hours by Christmas Eve – so no benefit for Christmas Day or St Stephen's Day.

A part-timer who qualifies still gets the benefit when the holiday falls on a day they never work. Citizens Information gives the example of an evening worker who never works Mondays but is owed one-fifth of a week's pay for the August bank holiday.

Long absences are the main exception: there is no benefit for someone absent immediately before the holiday for more than 26 weeks through illness, 52 weeks after an occupational accident, or 13 weeks of authorised absence such as lay-off (Third Schedule).

Worked example: three employees, one bank holiday weekend

Three people, two days, three different answers. Now multiply that by your whole team and ten holidays a year, then add starters, leavers and people on long-term sick leave.

How public holidays fit with annual leave

Public holidays come on top of annual leave. Statutory annual leave is up to 4 working weeks a year, worked out by whichever of the three methods in section 19 gives the most: 4 working weeks for at least 1,365 hours in the leave year, one-third of a working week for each month with at least 117 hours, or 8% of hours worked, capped at 4 working weeks.

Declan, for example, works 1,170 hours a year. 8% of that is 93.6 hours, capped at 4 of his working weeks (90 hours) – 12 days of annual leave. Each public holiday benefit is extra to those 12 days.

Three practical points follow. If you give the holiday itself as the paid day off, a Monday-to-Friday employee booking Easter week uses 4 days of leave, not 5. If you choose "an extra day of annual leave", that day must be added to the person's balance. And the unbroken 2-week block of leave that staff who work 8 months or more in the leave year are entitled to can include a public holiday (section 19(3) and (4)).

Planning cover and leave around the holidays

• Decide the benefit early. Requests for Christmas Day 2026 can arrive up to Friday 4 December; your answer is due by 11 December.
• Watch the midweek holidays. St Patrick's Day falls on a Wednesday in 2027 (it was a Tuesday in 2026), so expect leave requests for the days either side.
• Plan the weekend holidays. Christmas Day and St Stephen's Day 2027 fall on a Saturday and Sunday: Monday-to-Friday staff get no day off on either, but each still earns a benefit. Paid out as extra days' pay, that is €400 for someone on €1,000 a week.
• Roster with the holidays visible. A staff rota with the 2026–2027 public holidays already marked shows who is rostered on each holiday before you publish the week.
• Keep a record per employee. If someone complains to the WRC, you will need to show which benefit they got for each holiday.