UK bank holidays 2026: England and Wales.

Bank holidays in England and Wales come from the Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971 and royal proclamations. UK payment systems such as Bacs and CHAPS don’t process on them.

• Bacs and CHAPS don’t process payments. The Bacs cycle counts working days, so a bank holiday adds a day to it.
• Faster Payments run around the clock, bank holidays included.
• Substitute days: when New Year’s Day, Christmas Day or Boxing Day falls on a weekend, the next weekday (or two) becomes the bank holiday instead.
• Scotland and Northern Ireland have bank holidays of their own; this page is the England and Wales list.
• One-off bank holidays (for a coronation or a jubilee, say) are proclaimed by the monarch and can’t be computed in advance; check gov.uk for years ahead.

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, the early May bank holiday (1st Monday of May), the spring bank holiday (last Monday of May), the summer bank holiday (last Monday of August), Christmas Day and Boxing Day.
• New Year’s Day, Christmas Day and Boxing Day on a weekend move to the next weekday(s).
• One-off bank holidays proclaimed since 1995 are included for their years.
• One-off bank holidays are proclaimed by the monarch and cannot be computed in advance; check gov.uk/bank-holidays for years ahead.
• Scotland and Northern Ireland have different bank holidays.

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

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 1,
  "method": "tools/call",
  "params": {
    "name": "list_bank_holidays",
    "arguments": {
      "calendar": "uk-ew",
      "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.