TARGET2 closing days 2026: when euro payments don’t settle.

TARGET, the Eurosystem’s settlement system for euro payments (T2 since March 2023, still widely called TARGET2), has six closing days a year besides weekends. Banks and payment schemes across the euro area treat them as non-business days for interbank settlement.

On a weekend, so no weekday closes

• Christmas Holiday (26 December), Saturday, December 26, 2026. Falls on a Saturday: TARGET is closed on weekends anyway and gives no substitute day.

• SEPA Credit Transfers and SEPA Direct Debits don’t settle between banks; a collection due on a closing day settles on the next TARGET business day.
• SEPA Instant Credit Transfers run around the clock, every day of the year, closing days included.
• There are no substitute days: a closing day that falls on a weekend closes nothing else.
• National holidays can still close banks and markets in a euro-area country on a TARGET business day.

Need a date some business days out? The business day calculator does the math on this calendar.

• New Year’s Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Labour Day (May 1), Christmas Day and December 26.
• Good Friday and Easter Monday follow Easter Sunday (the Western, Gregorian date).
• A closing day on a weekend has no substitute.
• TARGET2 replaced TARGET in 2007 and was itself replaced by T2 in March 2023; the closing days have been the same since 2002.
• National holidays can still close banks and markets in a euro-area country on a TARGET business day.

curl -s 'https://payopskit.com/api/v1/holidays?calendar=target2&year=2026'

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 1,
  "method": "tools/call",
  "params": {
    "name": "list_bank_holidays",
    "arguments": {
      "calendar": "target2",
      "year": 2026
    }
  }
}

Add format=ics to the REST call for the calendar file; business_day_math answers “is it a business day”, next, previous, add and count.