Easter Sunday in Australia 2027

Australia's newest old holiday

Easter Sunday is the center of the Christian calendar and the heart of Australia's four-day Easter weekend, yet for most of the country's history it was not legally a public holiday at all — it was simply a Sunday. That has changed over the past 15 years. New South Wales declared Easter Sunday a public holiday in 2011, Victoria followed in 2016, Queensland in 2017, and South Australia and the Northern Territory in 2024, joining the Australian Capital Territory. Today six of the eight states and territories observe it; Western Australia and Tasmania still treat it as an ordinary Sunday.

Why legislate a Sunday?

The point is pay and fairnes rather than an extra day off. Australians who work weekends — in supermarkets, restaurants, hospitals, hotels — are covered by industrial awards, legally binding industry rule books that set premium "penalty rates" for public holidays above the ordinary Sunday rate - before the declerations, someone stocikng shevles on Easter Sunday was paid as if it were any Sunday while the rest of the Easter break carried holiday protections. Declaring the day a public holiday closed that gap, complating an unbroken protected stretch from Good Friday through Easter Monday in the observing states.

How the date is set

Easter Sunday falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the March equinox, so it moves between late March and late April — mid-autumn in Australia. Australia uses the same Western church calculation as the United States and Britain, so the date matches worldwide. Because the holiday is the Sunday itself, there is no observed-date shifting; the surrounding Good Friday, Easter Saturday and Easter Monday holidays supply the long weekend. And because the feast moves, the break can land more than a month apart from one year to the next, which is why school autumn holidays are built around it rather than around fixed dates.

How Australians spend it

Easter Sunday in Australia blends church, chocolate and the outdoors, morning services draw the year's biggest congregations, children hunt eggs delivered by the Easter Bunny — or the Easter Bilby, a native marsupial promoted since the 1990s as an Australian alternative — and families gather for lunch in the middle of the last warm long weekend before winter. The Sydney Royal Easter Show, the country's largest annual event, runs through the weekend, and coastal campgrounds fill for the last warm break of the year. Roads out of the capital cities clog on the Thursday before Good Friday, making Easter one of the busiest domestic travel stretches on the Australian calendar. Trading laws keep the day quiet in places: several states restrict large stores from opening on Easter Sunday, so shopping is thinner than on Easter Saturday even where the day is a holiday.

The holdouts and the U.S. contrast

Western Australia and Tasmania have not declared Easter Sunday, so it remains a normal Sunday there, with ordinary Sunday pay; Tasmania instead extends Easter with a restricted Easter Tuesday holiday for some workers. The American picture is different again: the United States has no Easter public holidays at any level of government, relying on the fact that most offices are closed on Sundays anyway. The Australian approach — using holiday law to raise weekend pay — reflects its award system, which has no U.S. equivalent.