If you manage a team with UK employees—or you're a UK-based remote worker—staying on top of bank holidays is harder than it sounds. England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland each observe different days off, and failing to account for them leads to missed deadlines, embarrassing meeting invitations, and frustrated team members.
This guide covers every UK bank holiday in 2026, explains the regional differences, and shows you how to automatically block them in your calendar so nothing slips through.
Why UK Bank Holidays Are More Complicated Than You Think
Unlike many countries with a single national holiday calendar, the UK has four distinct regional calendars. England and Wales share most of their bank holidays, but Scotland and Northern Ireland diverge significantly.
Here is what that means in practice: if you schedule a team standup on 2 January and you have colleagues in Scotland, they are on holiday—but your England-based team is not. Get this wrong and you lose credibility fast.
UK Bank Holidays 2026: Region by Region
England and Wales
- 1 January — New Year's Day
- 3 April — Good Friday
- 6 April — Easter Monday
- 4 May — Early May Bank Holiday
- 25 May — Spring Bank Holiday
- 31 August — Summer Bank Holiday
- 25 December — Christmas Day
- 28 December — Boxing Day (substitute day)
Scotland
Scotland observes most of the same holidays but has notable differences:
- 1 January — New Year's Day
- 2 January — 2nd January (Scotland only)
- 3 April — Good Friday
- 4 May — Early May Bank Holiday
- 25 May — Spring Bank Holiday
- 3 August — Summer Bank Holiday
- 30 November — St Andrew's Day (Scotland only)
- 25 December — Christmas Day
- 28 December — Boxing Day (substitute day)
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland shares England and Wales holidays with two additional observances:
- 1 January — New Year's Day
- 17 March — St Patrick's Day (Northern Ireland only)
- 3 April — Good Friday
- 6 April — Easter Monday
- 4 May — Early May Bank Holiday
- 25 May — Spring Bank Holiday
- 12 July — Battle of the Boyne (Northern Ireland only)
- 31 August — Summer Bank Holiday
- 25 December — Christmas Day
- 28 December — Boxing Day (substitute day)
Why Regional Differences Create Real Problems for Teams
Consider a common scenario: you run a daily standup at 9am. You copy your holiday calendar from England, so Good Friday and Easter Monday are blocked. But your colleague in Edinburgh has 2 January off and your Belfast team has 17 March off. Neither of those are on your radar.
The result: meetings scheduled on holidays, resentful team members, and awkward "oh, I forgot about St Andrew's Day" conversations.
This is not a hypothetical. It happens constantly in distributed teams.
How to Automatically Block UK Bank Holidays in Your Calendar
The manual approach—looking up each region's holidays and adding them one by one—takes time every year and is error-prone. A better approach is to automate it entirely.
Autolidays automatically detects your country (or the countries of your team members), imports the correct regional holiday calendars, and creates blocking events in your Google Calendar. When 2 January rolls around, your Scottish team's calendars show as unavailable. No manual entry needed.
You can see all the UK regional holiday data at /holidays/united-kingdom.
Setting Up UK Holidays in Autolidays
- Connect your Google Calendar account
- Select United Kingdom as your country
- Choose your specific region (England, Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland)
- Autolidays imports all bank holidays and creates blocking events automatically
- Your calendar now shows accurate availability for the rest of the year
Frequently Asked Questions
Are bank holidays the same across the UK?
No. England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland each have their own bank holiday schedules. England and Wales are closest to each other but still differ from Scotland and Northern Ireland.
What if my team spans multiple UK regions?
You need to track each region separately. Autolidays handles this by letting you import multiple country and region calendars, so your scheduling reflects the actual availability of each team member.
Do UK bank holidays affect salaried employees automatically?
Bank holidays are not automatically paid leave in the UK—it depends on your employment contract. But from a scheduling perspective, most employees take them off, so you should treat them as unavailable days.
How do I add UK bank holidays to Google Calendar?
You can manually add a UK holiday calendar in Google Calendar settings, but this only shows them as labels—it does not block your time. To actually block your calendar on bank holidays, use Autolidays.
Stop Scheduling Over Bank Holidays
Managing UK bank holidays manually is a recurring overhead that adds up. Every year, you need to check the official dates, account for regional differences, and update your calendar.
Autolidays does this automatically. Connect your calendar, set your region, and your holiday availability is handled for the rest of the year.