Bank Holidays Across 50 Countries · Work Cultures
TLDR: Public-holiday counts vary widely · Japan, Cambodia, and Kazakhstan have 16 or more days off, while the United Kingdom and Mexico sit near the bottom with 8 to 7. The gap reflects each country’s mix of religious tradition, civic anniversaries, and statutory work-rest culture. For globally distributed teams, the practical take-away is that no two calendars overlap perfectly · plan accordingly.
If you have ever scheduled a meeting across time zones and discovered that half your team is on holiday, you have run into the global bank-holiday problem. Public-holiday calendars are wildly different from country to country · not just in which days are off, but in how many. This article surveys 50 countries and explains why the spread is so wide.
The countries with the most public holidays
Asia leads the rankings.
Top of the table: Cambodia (~28 days), Sri Lanka (~25), Nepal (~22), Iran (~22), Kazakhstan (~16), Japan (~16). These are countries with multiple religious traditions observed in parallel, plus civic anniversaries.
Cambodia leads because the official calendar marks both Buddhist holidays (Pchum Ben, Bon Om Touk, Vesak) and royal-family anniversaries. Sri Lanka observes Poya days · every full moon is a public holiday · plus regular Christian, Hindu, and Muslim holidays. Japan added several days post-1948 (“Showa Day”, “Sea Day”, “Mountain Day”) to spread holidays evenly through the year.
The countries with the fewest
The Anglo-American world tends to sit near the bottom.
Bottom of the table: Mexico (~7-8 days), United Kingdom (~8), United States (~10 federal · though states add a few), Canada (~9-12 depending on province). The number of guaranteed paid public holidays is low; companies typically supplement with vacation policy.
The UK’s 8 bank holidays trace back to the 1871 Bank Holidays Act, which deliberately consolidated the working calendar to boost industrial productivity. The US federal calendar of 10 days is similarly minimal · individual states add Cesar Chavez Day, Patriots’ Day, etc., but the federal floor is lean.
Religious bundling vs disaggregation
A key driver of holiday count is whether a country bundles religious observances or treats each as a separate day.
Compare how Christmas appears: Sweden makes Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day three separate red days. The US treats only December 25 as federal. Greece adds Epiphany (January 6) and Theophany. Italy adds the Assumption (August 15). Same religion, very different calendar footprints.
The same applies to Islamic holidays. Saudi Arabia observes both Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha as multi-day holidays (3-4 days each). Indonesia matches the multi-day model. Türkiye gives a half day before Eid plus the full Eid. Egypt observes the days as fully off.
How holiday count affects work culture
Two practical effects shape global teams.
Effect 1 · meeting scheduling. Even within a single multinational, holiday calendars overlap by less than 50%. Sweden, Germany, and Japan share fewer than 5 holidays a year despite being close trading partners. Quarterly OKR reviews scheduled “the first Friday of the quarter” will inevitably hit somebody’s holiday.
Effect 2 · perceived productivity. A US team reading a Japanese counterpart’s calendar may misread “16 holidays” as “low effort”. The reality is the opposite · Japan’s karoshi (overwork) culture is well documented, and the holiday count was deliberately raised to enforce mandatory rest periods.
Public-holiday counts are a poor proxy for total time off. Many countries with low public-holiday counts (UK, US) compensate with longer paid-vacation policies. Conversely, several high-count countries (Cambodia, Iran) have minimal statutory paid vacation. The interesting comparison is total non-working time per year, not just the holiday line item.
Cultural note: Spain’s “puente” (bridge) and Mexico’s “lunes festivo” (Monday holiday) traditions effectively double the value of mid-week holidays by linking them with weekends. A Tuesday holiday becomes a four-day weekend by quietly closing the office on Monday.
Drill the holidays you don’t know
The fastest way to internalise an unfamiliar holiday calendar is to drill it as a recognition game. Pick a tradition (Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, or Secular), filter the game below, and run a few rounds.
Snapshot · 25 countries by holiday count
The rough public-holiday counts below are the publicly observed federal/national days · regional and religious-minority observances often add several more.
| Country | Holidays | Notable feature |
|---|---|---|
| Cambodia | 28 | Royal anniversaries + Buddhist + Khmer New Year |
| Sri Lanka | 25 | Every Poya day + multi-religious |
| Nepal | 22 | Multiple regional + religious |
| Iran | 22 | Islamic + revolutionary + Persian (Nowruz) |
| Kazakhstan | 16 | Soviet legacy + national + Islamic |
| Japan | 16 | Spread evenly · mandatory rest culture |
| Indonesia | 16 | Multi-religious (Islamic + Christian + Hindu + Buddhist) |
| Argentina | 15 | Civic + religious + ad-hoc tourism days |
| Colombia | 15 | Lunes festivos · holidays moved to Mondays |
| India | 14 | Multi-religious + regional |
| Russia | 14 | Civic + Orthodox |
| China | 13 | Lunar New Year (3-7 days) + National Day week |
| Spain | 12 | National + 4 regional holidays per province |
| Italy | 12 | Catholic + civic |
| France | 11 | Civic + Catholic |
| Germany | 9-13 | Varies by Land (state) · Bavaria has the most |
| Sweden | 13 | Lutheran + civic |
| Brazil | 12 | Catholic + civic + Carnival |
| South Korea | 15 | Lunar + civic |
| Türkiye | 14.5 | Islamic + civic |
| Australia | 11 | National + state |
| United States | 10 | Federal floor · states add 1-2 each |
| Canada | 9-12 | Federal + provincial |
| United Kingdom | 8 | Bank Holidays Act 1871 |
| Mexico | 7-8 | Lean federal · companies add days |
See also
- The History of Red Days · why public holidays print in red on calendars.
- Lunar vs Solar holidays · the calendar mechanics behind moving dates.
- Red Day Match game · drill 30+ holidays by date, religion, or country.
- Time Zone Converter · pair the holiday lookup with a DST-aware time-zone tool when scheduling cross-border meetings.
Practical advice: when launching a globally distributed team, build a shared calendar that overlays public holidays for every country represented. The first time you see Singapore’s 11, India’s 14, and Sweden’s 13 stacked on the same view, the planning conversation gets easier.
Red Day Match
Match public holidays to their date, religion, or country. Filter by Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, or Secular
Play nowWorks on any device.
