Every date on this site comes from one source: the official UK bank holidays data published by the UK government on GOV.UK. This page explains how we use it, how we calculate years that are not yet published, and where the limits are.
The official data
GOV.UK publishes the bank holidays for England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as a public data file at gov.uk/bank-holidays.json. Each entry has a date, a title and, for substitute days, a note. Our system imports this file every night, checks that each region and year has a plausible number of dates, and keeps the previous version if the file cannot be read or looks wrong. When the official data changes, our editors receive an alert and review the affected pages.
Each data block shows the date it was last confirmed against GOV.UK, for example “Source: GOV.UK ยท checked 4 November 2026”.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Royal proclamations and one-off bank holidays
Extra or moved bank holidays, such as jubilees or Scotland’s World Cup bank holiday in 2026, are made by royal proclamation and then appear in the GOV.UK data. We check new proclamations and the related government announcements by hand and explain them on the affected pages.
Provisional years
GOV.UK publishes bank holidays a few years ahead. For later years we calculate the dates from the usual rules: the fixed dates and their substitute days, the Monday holidays in May and August, and Easter from the church calendar. These dates are always marked “provisional”. They can change, for example if a one-off bank holiday is announced, and the label disappears automatically once GOV.UK publishes the year.
How “today” is calculated
Answers such as “Is today a bank holiday?” and the countdowns use the current date in UK time (Europe/London). The answer changes at midnight UK time, also for readers in other time zones.
Limits
We report bank holidays, not opening hours or employment rights. A bank holiday does not oblige employers to give a day off or businesses to close; your contract, your employer or the business concerned decides. Local holidays in Scotland and school holidays are not bank holidays and are not covered by the official data.
Found a mistake? Please contact us; corrections are handled as described in our editorial policy.