2027 calendar with UK bank holidays

How UK bank holidays and substitute days work

Bank holidays are the days banks close and most offices and schools follow. The Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971 lists most of them; in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, New Year's Day and the early May bank holiday are added each year by royal proclamation, and Good Friday and Christmas Day are "common law" holidays that need no Act at all. gov.uk publishes the resulting dates for each nation, and that list is the one this calendar marks.

When a bank holiday lands on a Saturday or Sunday, a substitute day is given on the next weekday that is not already a holiday. 2027 shows the rule twice over at Christmas: Christmas Day is a Saturday and Boxing Day a Sunday, so the bank holidays move to Monday 27 December and Tuesday 28 December. Scotland gets a third substitute: 2 January 2027 is a Saturday, so its bank holiday is Monday 4 January. New Year's Day itself is a Friday and needs no substitute.

Easter is early: Easter Sunday is 28 March, so Good Friday is 26 March and Easter Monday 29 March. The two May holidays are the first and last Mondays (3 and 31 May), and the summer holiday is the last Monday of August (30 August) except in Scotland.

A bank holiday is not a legal right to a day off. Full-time workers are entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid leave a year, and an employer may count bank holidays as part of it or ask people to work them; the contract decides.

Why Scotland and Northern Ireland differ

The 1971 Act gives Scotland its own schedule, and Northern Ireland adds days by proclamation, so the three lists share only six 2027 dates (New Year's Day, Good Friday, both May Mondays and the two Christmas substitutes).

• Scotland (9): keeps 2 January (observed 4 January), drops Easter Monday, takes the summer holiday on the first Monday of August (2 August) and adds St Andrew's Day, Tuesday 30 November, under the St Andrew's Day Bank Holiday (Scotland) Act 2007. Many Scottish employers instead follow local public holidays set by each council, which no national list covers.
• Northern Ireland (10): the England and Wales eight plus St Patrick's Day on Wednesday 17 March and the Battle of the Boyne (Orangemen's Day), which falls on its usual date, Monday 12 July, in 2027.
• Wales shares England's list: St David's Day (1 March) is not a bank holiday.

Pick the nation under Bank holidays for and the grid redraws with that list; the choice goes into the address, so a link such as ?country=GB-SCT opens the Scottish calendar directly and ?country=GB-NIR&layout=month gives Northern Ireland a month per page.

Printing at A4 without scaling

This page starts on A4 (210 × 297 mm), landscape, with weeks starting on Monday as UK diaries do. Download the PDF and, in the print dialog, set Scale: 100 % or Actual size; "Fit to page" or "Shrink oversized pages" only shrinks the sheet a few percent for no gain. The year grid stays 11 mm from every edge (12 mm on the month pages), more than the 3 to 5 mm a home inkjet or laser cannot reach, so nothing is clipped. A finished A4 page fits a standard 21 × 29.7 cm frame without trimming.

For a wall planner, keep the whole year on one landscape page; for a fridge or desk calendar choose A month per page in portrait, where each day cell is about 2.7 cm wide, with room for a few words and the holiday's name printed inside its cell. Turn on ISO week numbers if your workplace plans by week: 2027's week 1 starts on Monday 4 January.

Honest limits

Only gov.uk's bank holidays are marked: no Scottish local holidays, no school term dates and no observances such as Mother's Day (Mothering Sunday). gov.uk's file published dates for 2019 to 2028 when it was copied, so ?year=2028 marks 2028's UK bank holidays too; for years outside that range the calendar marks nothing rather than guess. If the government adds a one-off bank holiday for 2027, as it did for the 2023 coronation, this page will not show it until its copy of the list is updated. For the United States, the 2027 calendar with US federal holidays starts on US Letter with Sunday-first weeks. The main 2027 calendar maker has the same tool with US, German, Spanish, French, Canadian, Australian and Mexican holidays.

How a long weekend is counted

A long weekend here is any run of three or more days off in a row made only of Saturdays, Sundays and the public holidays this calendar marks for your country (and region, if you pick one). Nothing else counts: a day the source does not list is a working day, no “observed” day is added that the source does not state, and a holiday marked for part of a day only (Queensland’s Christmas Eve, from 6 pm) does not join a run. In England and Wales, Good Friday (26 March 2027) and Easter Monday (29 March) make one four-day run; the other 2027 bank holidays are Mondays, giving three-day weekends, and the substitute days for Christmas make Saturday 25 to Tuesday 28 December four days.

Bridge days are suggestions, not holidays. A bridge day is an ordinary working day between a holiday and a weekend. Take Friday 7 May 2027 off in Germany, after Ascension Day (Christi Himmelfahrt) on Thursday 6 May, and you are off Thursday to Sunday: four days for one day of leave. Two days of leave are listed when they give five or more days off, and three only when they join two weekends — Wednesday 29 to Friday 31 December in England and Wales turn into ten days, Saturday 25 December to Monday 3 January 2028 (the New Year substitute day). A bridge day is never coloured on the grid or in the PDF. Tick Mark long weekends (or add lw=1 to the link) to draw a dashed outline round every run on the sheet and in each PDF layout; month pages also print each run under that month’s holidays.