Sources
Sources and method — where our holiday dates come from
Every date on this site can be traced back to a source. Here is exactly what we use, and what we do not claim to know.
National public holidays
The base layer is the open Nager.Date public holiday API (date.nager.at), which covers 190+ countries and marks each day as public, bank, school, optional or observance, and whether it is nationwide or regional.
Regional and municipal days
Where the open feed is thin, regional days are added by hand from official sources — for example Good Friday and 26 December in Alsace-Moselle, the abolition-of-slavery days in the French overseas departments, and Carnival plus municipal holidays in Portugal, each tagged with its ISO region code.
School terms
School calendars are compiled from the national education ministries: gov.uk for the UK, the Ministerio de Educación for Spain, the KMK for Germany, the Ministère de l'Éducation nationale for France, and the DGE for Portugal. Individual schools and councils add their own training days, so always confirm with the school.
Written guidance
The notes on what closes, how people take the days, and what a visitor should expect are written by hand per country and per holiday. Where a page falls back to general guidance rather than country-specific writing, it says so in the page itself.
How often it updates
Holiday data is refreshed from the feed continuously and covers last year plus four years ahead. Governments move dates — especially substitute days — so the current and next year are the most reliable.
Found a mistake?
Tell us the country, the date and the correct information and it will be checked against the official source and fixed. Accuracy matters more here than coverage.
Primary sources
Written and maintained by Mike McCabe.
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