Australia Public Holidays

Because Australia spans multiple climate zones and states set several of their own holidays, a date like the Queen's/King's Birthday holiday (itself movable and excluded from the fixed-date table above) is actually observed on different dates in different states in the same year — a further layer of real variation beyond just which holidays are observed at all.

Australia's public holiday calendar is set nationally for a few dates and at the state/territory level for others, meaning the exact list of observed public holidays genuinely differs depending on which Australian state you're in.

Australia Day, marking the 1788 landing of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove, is also one of the country's more publicly debated holidays, with a growing movement — reflected in some local council decisions — questioning or changing how the date is marked, particularly regarding its significance to Indigenous Australians.

Anzac Day, commemorating the 1915 Gallipoli campaign and honoring military service more broadly, is observed with dawn services nationwide and is one of the country's most solemn public holidays.

Labour Day is observed on entirely different dates in different Australian states and territories, a genuine year-round scheduling wrinkle beyond the more commonly cited Queen's/King's Birthday variation, since some states mark it in March, others in May, and others again in October.

Boxing Day retains its full statutory status nationally in Australia, the same shared-Commonwealth-origin holiday found in the UK, Canada, and New Zealand, though as with those other countries, when it falls on a weekend the substitute-day rule applied can differ by state.

Each Australian state and territory also observes its own separate Show Day or Bank Holiday specific to a regional agricultural show or local event, adding yet another layer of real scheduling variation on top of the nationally shared and state-Queen's Birthday-level differences already described.

New Year's Day, Australia Day, Good Friday, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day are the closest thing Australia has to a nationally uniform holiday list observed identically in every state and territory, with essentially everything else on the calendar subject to at least some state-level variation in either date or observance.

Australia's Fair Work Act sets out national minimum standards for public holiday pay and substitute-day entitlements, even though the specific list of which dates count as public holidays is still largely a state and territory matter — a federal floor under a state-driven calendar, broadly similar in structure to Canada's federal/provincial split.

The Queen's Birthday holiday's name and framing shifted to King's Birthday following the 2022 change in the British monarchy, an example of how a holiday tied to an office (the reigning monarch) rather than a fixed historical event automatically updates its name and significance when that office changes hands, unlike a holiday commemorating a one-time historical event.

Australia's holiday calendar is reviewed periodically by each state's own industrial relations authority, meaning the exact date of a movable state-specific holiday (like a state's own show day) can shift from year to year even within that same state, independent of any national-level change.

Anyone scheduling across more than one Australian state should check each relevant state's own official holiday list directly, since this page's national table only reliably covers the handful of dates actually shared uniformly nationwide.

Good Friday, Easter Monday, and the Queen's/King's Birthday holiday are movable and computed separately.

Source: Australian Government Fair Work Ombudsman public holidays list, as of 2026-07-12.