Mexico Public Holidays

Mexico's "puente" (bridge) system — moving certain holidays to the nearest Monday — was specifically designed to create long weekends and is now a well-established feature of Mexican labor culture, distinct from the fixed, undated holidays like Independence Day and Christmas that stay on their exact calendar date every year.

Mexico's official public holiday calendar under federal labor law is relatively compact, and — notably — Cinco de Mayo (May 5) is NOT among Mexico's official statutory federal holidays, despite its outsized visibility in the United States; it's a regional observance tied specifically to the state of Puebla rather than a national day off.

Independence Day (September 16) marks Mexico's 1810 declaration of independence from Spain, initiated by Miguel Hidalgo's Grito de Dolores — genuinely distinct from Cinco de Mayo, a common point of confusion outside Mexico.

Several Mexican holidays (Constitution Day, Benito Juárez's Birthday, Revolution Day) are observed on the preceding Monday under a weekday-shifting rule specifically designed to create long weekends, a deliberate labor-law policy choice known informally as a "puente" (bridge) system.

Día de la Revolución (Revolution Day) commemorates the start of the 1910 Mexican Revolution and, like Constitution Day and Benito Juárez's Birthday, is shifted to the third Monday of its respective month rather than kept on its original historical date — a deliberate trade of historical-date precision for a guaranteed long weekend.

Day of the Dead (Día de Muertos, November 1-2), while not a federal statutory public holiday in the strict legal sense, is one of Mexico's most culturally significant observances and is widely treated as a de facto non-working period in much of the country, similar to how Carnival functions in Brazil.

Mexico's labor law also guarantees a specific, separate paid holiday on December 1 once every six years, specifically on the date of a new federal president's inauguration — a genuinely unusual, cycle-based addition to the calendar tied to the country's presidential term structure rather than a fixed annual date.

Mexico's Federal Labor Law explicitly lists its statutory holidays (días de descanso obligatorio) separately from the many additional civic and religious observances marked culturally but without a guaranteed day off, a distinction worth knowing since not every widely recognized Mexican observance carries the same legal weight as Independence Day or Christmas.

Employees required to work on one of Mexico's statutory rest days are legally entitled to triple pay for that day under federal labor law — a specifically codified premium distinct from the more varied holiday-pay approaches described for other countries on this page.

Mexico's presidential-inauguration holiday, occurring only once every six years, is a genuinely rare recurring event on the country's calendar — most people scheduling around Mexican holidays in any given year won't encounter it at all, since it applies only in the specific year a new six-year presidential term begins.

Mexico's official statutory holiday count is comparatively modest internationally, which is part of why the informally observed "puente" long-weekend culture plays such a visible role in how Mexicans actually experience time off relative to the strict legal minimum.

Mexico's federal labor law applies its statutory holiday list uniformly across all 32 states, without the state-by-state variation seen in several other federally structured countries covered on this page — a genuinely simpler single national list once the puente-shifting rules are accounted for.

Constitution Day, Benito Juárez's Birthday, and Revolution Day are weekday-rule (observed the preceding Monday) and computed separately.

Source: Mexican Federal Labour Law (Ley Federal del Trabajo) Article 74, as of 2026-07-12.