Public holidays in Netherlands 2026

The Netherlands has 9 nationwide public holidays in 2026. That count covers days observed across the whole country only: regional holidays set by individual provinces or municipalities come on top of this list, so many residents get more days off than the national total suggests.

The shape of the year

The year opens with New Year’s Day on Thursday, 1 January, and closes with St. Stephen’s Day on Saturday, 26 December. Between those two dates the calendar is uneven. The longest gap without a holiday runs 214 days, stretching from Whit Monday all the way to Christmas Day - most of the second half of the year passes without a single nationwide day off.

Weekday luck in 2026

How a holiday lands on the calendar decides whether it actually shortens anyone’s working week. In 2026, 3 of the Netherlands’s public holidays fall on a Monday, extending the weekend for anyone working a standard week, and 1 falls on a Friday, doing the same at the other end.

The rest of the year is less generous. 3 holidays fall on a weekend: Easter Sunday and Pentecost both land on a Sunday, and St. Stephen’s Day falls on a Saturday. A holiday that coincides with a weekend is often a day lost rather than a day gained, unless local rules move the observance to a weekday - and whether that happens varies widely from country to country, so it is worth checking separately rather than assuming.

Figures on this page come from the Nager.Date open holiday dataset, as of this page’s review. Governments can and do adjust public holiday dates after publication, so treat the table below as a snapshot rather than a permanent fixture.