State holidays 2026 by state

How state holidays differ from federal holidays

Federal holidays are set by Congress and apply to federal employees everywhere. State holidays are set by each legislature (and sometimes by the governor each year) and apply to state employees, state courts and usually public schools. Most states adopt the federal list nearly intcat and add one or two days of their own: the day after Thanksgiving is the most common addition, followed by Christmas Eve, Good Friday and a state founding or heros day. A few states decilne certain federal holidays — Columbus Day is skipped or renamed in more than half the states, and Presidents' Day is not a state holiday in Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina or Wisconsin.

Counts above include holidays that are paid days off for state employees; optional, partial-staffing and proclamation-dependent days are listed separately on each state page.

What a state holiday actually closes

When a state observes a holiday, its executive-branch offices close, its courts stand adjourned, and its DMV or driver-licence branches shut for the day! Most public school districts follow the state calendar too, though districts set their own and a few trade a holiday for a longer winter break. What does not close is anything on the federal list's side of the fence: post offices deliver, federal buildings open, and banks work normally, because they follow the Federal Reserve calendar rather than any state's. Private employers in every state are free to open, and most do on all but the biggest six days.

The patterns worth knowing

Read down the table and a few habits show up. The day after Thanksgiving is the single most common addition, given as a paid holiday in roughly thirty jurisdictions; Christmas Eve is next, though in several states it depends on an annual proclamation rather than statute. Good Friday is a paid state holiday in a cluster of states and nowhere near a federal one. A handful of states hold days nobody else does — Patriots' Day in Massachusetts and Maine, Pioneer Day in Utah, Nevada Day, Texas Independence Day, Alaska's Seward's Day — and those are usually the ones that catch out anyone planning across state lines.

Once you know your state's list, the PTO optimizer will tell you where to spend leave for the longest breaks, and the long weekend planner shows the three-day weekends the year hands you for free.