Germany Public Holidays

Reformation Day (October 31) and Epiphany (January 6) are two further examples of Germany's state-level variation: Reformation Day is a public holiday in several predominantly Protestant states but not nationally, while Epiphany is observed mainly in states with larger Catholic populations, directly reflecting the country's historical religious geography.

Germany's public holiday calendar is unusually decentralized: only a handful of holidays (like New Year's Day, Labour Day, German Unity Day, and Christmas) are observed nationwide, while a substantial number of additional holidays are set individually by each of the 16 federal states (Bundesländer), based partly on regional religious history — predominantly Catholic states tend to observe more religious holidays than predominantly Protestant ones.

German Unity Day (October 3) commemorates the 1990 reunification of East and West Germany, chosen specifically because it was the date the reunification treaty took effect, rather than any older historical anniversary.

Because of this regional variation, a holiday that closes offices in Bavaria may be a normal working day in Hamburg — a genuine, practically important difference for anyone scheduling business across German states.

Bavaria and Saarland are typically cited as observing the largest number of state-level holidays of any German states, owing to their comparatively larger Catholic populations and correspondingly fuller religious holiday calendars, while several northern states observe close to only the nationally shared minimum.

Good Friday holds full statutory status in Germany with unusually strict rules in several states around what businesses may open — a reflection of the day's specifically Protestant significance in German religious history, distinct from how some other predominantly Christian countries treat the same date more as a customary closure than a strictly regulated one.

Germany also enforces "stille Feiertage" (quiet holidays) rules on certain dates, including Good Friday and All Souls' Day in several states, legally restricting public entertainment and dancing events on those specific days — a genuinely distinctive regulatory layer beyond simply which businesses stay closed.

Shops in Germany are subject to strict closing-hours regulations (Ladenschlussgesetz) on public holidays that go beyond simple custom — most retail stores are legally required to stay closed on statutory holidays nationwide, a stricter and more uniformly enforced rule than the more custom-based holiday shop closures seen in some other European countries.

Germany's 16 states are themselves grouped along old East/West lines for some holiday comparisons — Repentance Day (Buß- und Bettag) remains a full public holiday only in Saxony today, having been a nationwide holiday before a 1995 reform tied to funding a new long-term-care insurance scheme removed it almost everywhere else.

World Children's Day became Thuringia's newest state-specific public holiday in 2019, one of the more recent additions to Germany's already decentralized calendar, and a further example of an individual state continuing to actively add to its own list independent of any nationwide change.

Germany's federal states publish their own official school-holiday and public-holiday calendars separately each year, and because school terms are staggered across states specifically to spread out national travel demand, a public holiday overlapping with a school break in one state won't necessarily do so in another.

Anyone scheduling business across German states should treat this page's small nationwide list as a floor rather than a ceiling — checking the specific relevant state's own full holiday calendar directly is the only reliable way to know the complete list of closures for that particular location.

Good Friday, Easter Monday, Ascension Day, and Whit Monday are movable and computed separately; several regional (Bundesland) holidays also apply.

Source: German federal public holiday statute, as of 2026-07-12.