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11 public holidays
France has 11 public holiday dates recorded for 2026. 11 of the listed dates are treated as non-working days and reduce the working-day count; 2 of those fall at a weekend. For the effect on working days see France business days 2026.
| Date | Day | Holiday | Deducted from working days |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-01-01 | Thursday | Jour de l'an | Yes |
| 2026-04-06 | Monday | Lundi de Pâques | Yes |
| 2026-05-01 | Friday | Fête du Travail | Yes |
| 2026-05-08 | Friday | Victoire 1945 | Yes |
| 2026-05-14 | Thursday | Ascension | Yes |
| 2026-05-25 | Monday | Lundi de Pentecôte | Yes |
| 2026-07-14 | Tuesday | Fête nationale | Yes |
| 2026-08-15 | Saturday | Assomption | Yes |
| 2026-11-01 | Sunday | Toussaint | Yes |
| 2026-11-11 | Wednesday | Armistice 1918 | Yes |
| 2026-12-25 | Friday | Noël | Yes |
France sets eleven public holidays by statute (Code du travail, Article L3133-1), one of the higher budgets in Europe. Three are movable religious-origin dates (Easter Monday, Ascension and Whit Monday); three more — the Assumption on 15 August, All Saints on 1 November and the Immaculate Conception on 8 December — are fixed feast days, and the list notably includes Victory in Europe Day (8 May) and Bastille Day (14 July) alongside the Christian calendar — the secular and sacred layers of French history both survive in the diary.
Whit Monday carries a peculiar modern history: after the 2003 heat wave killed thousands of mostly elderly people while everyone was on a long weekend, the 2004 reform turned the lundi de Pentecôte into a "day of solidarity" — a working day whose unpaid hours fund care for the dependent elderly. In practice most firms close anyway or grant it back, which is exactly the kind of gap between legal text and reality that planning tools should surface. The French do use the faire le pont ("make the bridge") custom: when a holiday lands on a Tuesday or Thursday, taking the Friday or Monday to extend the weekend is a well-established move, and May's cluster of holidays (1, 8, and Ascension around it) regularly produces the "mai à rallonge" — a near-restart of the working month.
Deducted days are national public holidays (the days the dataset records as applying to the whole country). Holidays observed only in part of the country, or only in particular sectors, are listed with “Regional or sector-specific only” and are not deducted from the business-day counts.