United States Public Holidays

Federal holidays falling on a Saturday are typically observed the preceding Friday, and those falling on a Sunday are typically observed the following Monday — a genuine, standard federal scheduling rule worth knowing when a fixed date like Christmas or Independence Day lands on a weekend.

US federal holidays are set by Congress and apply to federal employees and, by widespread private-sector convention, much of the rest of the working population — though private employers aren't legally required to observe them, which is a real, common source of confusion for people new to US employment norms.

Several of the country's most prominent holidays — Thanksgiving, Labor Day, Memorial Day, MLK Day, Presidents' Day, and Columbus Day among them — are defined by a weekday rule (like "the fourth Thursday in November") rather than a fixed calendar date, so their actual date moves every year; those weekday-rule holidays are covered on their own dedicated Days Until pages rather than in the fixed-date table on this page.

The federal holiday calendar has changed within living memory — Juneteenth became the newest addition in 2021, marking the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established in 1983.

Because federal holidays don't automatically bind private employers, many US companies publish their own separate holiday schedule that may add days (a floating personal holiday, the day after Thanksgiving) or, less commonly, omit one of the federal list — worth checking your own employer's specific policy rather than assuming the federal list applies directly to your own time off.

The federal government's own "observed" rule (shifting a Saturday holiday to Friday and a Sunday holiday to Monday) is specifically a federal-employee scheduling convention; state and private-sector observance of the same shift varies, which is exactly the kind of assumption worth checking explicitly on the Business Days Calculator rather than assuming uniformly across every US-based counterparty.

Individual US states can also add their own state-specific public holidays beyond the shared federal list — Texas observes Texas Independence Day, and several Southern states have historically observed additional Confederate-related commemorative days, a genuine and sometimes contentious source of state-by-state calendar variation beyond the federal baseline covered on this page.

Financial markets in the US follow a holiday calendar set independently by exchanges (like the NYSE and Nasdaq) rather than automatically inheriting the federal government's own list — the two calendars mostly overlap but aren't legally required to match, and a market holiday closure should be checked against the relevant exchange's own published schedule rather than assumed from the federal list alone.

Election Day, held the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November in even-numbered years, is a public holiday in some individual states but is not a federal holiday nationwide — a genuinely inconsistent patchwork that surprises many people comparing US civic holidays to other democracies where election day is more uniformly a non-working day.

The US Postal Service follows the federal holiday list closely for mail delivery suspensions, which is one of the most visible everyday ways the federal calendar reaches ordinary Americans regardless of their own employer's specific policy — checking whether a given date is a USPS holiday is a common practical reason people look up this exact list.

MLK Day, Presidents' Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, and Thanksgiving are all defined by weekday rule (e.g. 'fourth Thursday in November'), not a fixed date, and are computed separately.

Source: US Office of Personnel Management federal holiday list, as of 2026-07-12.