Public holidays in Germany

By law, "the Sundays and the public holidays remain protected as days of rest from work and of spiritual elevation" (Art. 139 WRV, part of the German constitution via Art. 140 GG). Thus all Sundays are, in a manner, public holidays – but usually not understood by the term "holiday" (except for, normally, Easter Sunday and Pentecost Sunday).

Public holidays apart from the Sundays (there must be some of them constitutionally) can be declared by law by either the Federation or the Länder for their respective jurisdictions. By federal law, only the German Unity Day is made a holiday at present (Unity Treaty, Art. 2 sect. 2); the others, even the ones celebrated all over Germany, are made holidays by state legislation.

List by state

Holiday	Local name (in German)	Date	BW	BY	BE	BB	HB	HH	HE	MV	NI	NW	RP	SL	SN	ST	SH	TH
New Year's Day	Neujahrstag	1 January	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Epiphany	Heilige Drei Könige	6 January	✔	✔												✔
International Women's Day^[1]	Internationaler Frauentag	8 March			✔					✔
Good Friday	Karfreitag	Easter Sunday – 2d	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Easter Monday	Ostermontag	Easter Sunday + 1d	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Labour Day	Tag der Arbeit	1 May	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Ascension Day	Christi Himmelfahrt	Easter Sunday + 39d	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Whit Monday	Pfingstmontag^[2]	Easter Sunday + 50d	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Corpus Christi	Fronleichnam	Easter Sunday + 60d	✔	✔					✔			✔	✔	✔	^[a]			^[b]
Augsburg Peace Festival	Augsburger Friedensfest	8 August		^[c]
Assumption Day	Mariä Himmelfahrt	15 August		✔^[d]^[e]										✔
World Children's Day	Weltkindertag	20 September																✔^[f]^[3]
German Unity Day	Tag der Deutschen Einheit	3 October	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Reformation Day^[g]	Reformationstag	31 October				✔	✔^[h]^[4]	✔^[h]^[5]		✔	✔^[h]^[6]				✔	✔	✔^[h]^[7]	✔
All Saints' Day	Allerheiligen	1 November	✔	✔								✔	✔	✔
Repentance and Prayer Day^[i]	Buß- und Bettag	Wednesday before Totensonntag		^[e]											✔
Christmas Day	Weihnachtstag	25 December	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Second Day of Christmas	Zweiter Weihnachtsfeiertag	26 December	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Total number of holidays per state^[j]			12	13	10	10	10	10	10	11	10	11	11	12	11	11	10	11^[f]

Notes

✔ – Public holiday is celebrated in that state.

1. Public holiday only in few Sorbian communities.
2. Public holiday only in the Catholic district of Eichsfeld.
3. Public holiday only in the city of Augsburg.
4. Public holiday only in approx. 1700 communities with predominantly Catholic population and in the cities of Augsburg and Munich.
5. Schools are closed all over the state on that day.
6. From 2019 onwards.
7. One-time public holiday in all states, including those not normally observing Reformation Day, to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017.
8. Four states adopted the Reformation Day as permanent holiday starting in 2018 (Bremen, Hamburg, Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein (see table for references)).
9. Public holiday in all states until 1994. The holiday was discontinued with introduction of nursing care insurance. Saxony is the only state where employers do not have to pay for nursing care insurance (paid by employees in that state) and where the holiday is still kept.
10. For states where some holidays are not observed uniformly all over the state, such holidays are included in the state's total number of holidays if their celebration is predominant and widespread in that state:
    • Bavaria: with Assumption Day, without Peace Festival.
    • Saxony and Thuringia: without Corpus Christi.

In addition, the state of Brandenburg formally declared Easter Sunday and Pentecost Sunday as public holidays. As these are Sundays anyway, they have been left out by the other states, nor counted in the table above (the state of Hesse even declared all Sundays public holidays).

Germany-wide observed holidays from 2024 to 2029

• New Year's Day (Jan 01)

2024: Mon 2025: Wed 2026: Thur 2027: Fri 2028: Sat 2029: Mon

• Easter: Good Friday + Easter Monday

2024: Mar 29 + Apr 01 2025: Apr 18 + Apr 21 2026: Apr 03 + Apr 06 2027: Mar 26 + Mar 29 2028: Apr 14 + Apr 17 2029: Mar 30 + Apr 02

• Labor Day (May 01)

2024: Wed 2025: Thur 2026: Fri 2027: Sat 2028: Mon 2029: Tue

• Ascension Day (Thur)

2024: May 09 2025: May 29 2026: May 14 2027: May 06 2028: May 25 2029: May 10

• Pentecost: Whit Monday

2024: May 20 2025: Jun 09 2026: May 25 2027: May 17 2028: Jun 06 2029: May 21

• German Unity Day (Oct 03)

2024: Thur 2025: Fri 2026: Sat 2027: Sun 2028: Tue 2029: Wed

• Christmas (Dec 25+26)

2024: Wed + Thur 2025: Thur + Fri 2026: Fri + Sat 2027: Sat + Sun 2028: Mon + Tue 2029: Tue + Wed

Quiet days

A couple of days are designated stille Tage (quiet days) by state legislation, which regularly means that public dancing events, music at inns (if live or if not much quieter than usual) etc. are prohibited.

Some public holidays are quiet days:

• Good Friday
• Prayer and Repentance Day (where it is a public holiday and in a couple of other states)
• All Saints (where it is a public holiday)

One de facto public holiday (not determined by law, because it is always on a Sunday, but with officially organized celebrations) is a quiet day:

• Memorial Day (33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time)

One other Sunday is a quiet day:

• Totensonntag (the German-Protestant equivalent of All Souls Day), on the last Sunday of the ecclesiastical year

Some days may be quiet days without being public holidays:

• Christmas Eve (beginning in the afternoon, in some states)
• Ash Wednesday (in Bavaria)
• Holy Thursday (in some states; in some of them beginning in the evening)
• Holy Saturday (in some states)
• All Souls' Day (in Lower Saxony and the Saarland)

In a limited number of cases – apart from All Saints which, however, has long been associated in popular understanding with remembrance of the dead. The status of quiet days is also given to festivities joyous in nature: in Hesse, the highest Christian holidays are half-quiet days (until midday) and in Rhineland-Palatinate, Easter Sunday and Christmas Day are two-thirds-quiet days (until 16 o'clock). For details see the German article on the dancing ban.

Flag days

A yet third category that may sometimes be called "holidays" in a sense are the "flag days" (Beflaggungstage). Only the very highest institutions and the military use the national flags at every day, so the directives when flags are to be displayed mark the days in question as special.

Flags are to be shown by Federal Decree on

• Holocaust Memorial Day (27 January, half-mast)
• Labour Day (1 May)
• Europe Day (9 May)
• Constitution Day (23 May)
• Uprising Day (17 June) This day was public holiday under the title of "German Unity Day" from 1954 until 1990 when that unity actually was achieved.
• World Refugee Day (20 June)
• German Unity Day (3 October)
• Memorial Day (half-mast) (two Sundays before the first day of Advent)
• Election Day (Bundestag, European Parliament)

and by state decrees on other days, such as election days for state parliaments, state constitution days, anniversary of the election of the Federal President (in Berlin) and so forth.

Frequently flags are ordered ad hoc to be shown at half-mast in cases of national mourning.

Unofficial holidays

Either Carnival Monday ("Rosenmontag") or Mardi Gras is a de facto holiday in some towns and cities in Catholic western and southern Germany which have a strong Carnival tradition.

Also, Christmas Eve is developing into a semi-holiday: from mid-afternoon it is practically treated as a holiday, and while shops still open in the morning, for other businesses (apart from those that work even on holidays) this is becoming increasingly unusual; schools are closed in any case.

Customs about holidays

Ascension Day (Christi Himmelfahrt) and Corpus Christi (Fronleichnam) are both always on Thursdays. By taking only one day's leave, employees can have a four-day weekend.

The Three Kings Day, better known as Epiphany, is 6 January, the day after the 12 days of Christmas. In parts of Germany, it has its own local customs.

Public holidays in the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany)

Holiday	Local name	Date	Remarks
New Year	Neujahr	1 January
Good Friday	Karfreitag	Easter Sunday – 2d
Easter Monday	Ostermontag	Easter Sunday + 1d	until 1967 and in 1990
Labour Day	Internationaler Kampf- und Feiertag der Werktätigen für Frieden und Sozialismus	1 May
Liberation Day	Tag der Befreiung	8 May	until 1967 and in 1985
Victory Day	Tag des Sieges	9 May	only in 1975
Ascension Day	Christi Himmelfahrt	Easter Sunday + 39d	until 1967 and in 1990
Whit Monday	Pfingstmontag	Easter Sunday + 50d
Day of the Republic	Tag der Republik	7 October
Reformation Day	Reformationstag	31 October	until 1966
Day of Repentance and Prayer	Buß- und Bettag	Wed. before 23 November	until 1966
Christmas Day	1. Weihnachtsfeiertag	25 December
St Stephen's Day / Boxing Day	2. Weihnachtsfeiertag	26 December

See also

• Holidays in Nazi Germany

References

1. . berlin.de (in German). 11 February 2019. Archived from the original on 18 June 2021. Retrieved 2 January 2023.
2. https://uol.de/internationalisierung-zu-hause/termin/termin/pfingstmontag-feiertag-in-deutschland
3. "Thüringen bekommt neuen Feiertag". 28 February 2019.
4. Weser-Kurier. "Reformationstag wird Feiertag in Bremen" (in German). Retrieved 20 June 2018.
5. NDR (28 February 2018). (in German). Archived from the original on 3 February 2019.
6. NDR (19 June 2018). (in German). Archived from the original on 9 July 2018. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
7. (in German). NDR. 22 February 2018. Archived from the original on 3 February 2019. Retrieved 24 February 2018.