Working days calculator
Count working days between two dates, or add them to one. Weekends and the official bank holidays are excluded.
The start date does not count
Counting begins the day after the start date, which is the convention every UK notice period, court deadline and payment term uses. Notice served on a Friday starts running on the Monday.
So “within 5 working days of Monday” means by the following Monday, not by the Friday. It is the single most common off-by-one in deadline arithmetic, and it goes the expensive way: assuming the start day counts makes you a day late.
The three nations have different holidays
This matters more than people expect, and picking the wrong one changes the answer.
Scotland has 2 January, and does not have Easter Monday as a bank holiday, which surprises almost everyone. Northern Ireland has St Patrick’s Day on 17 March and the Battle of the Boyne on 12 July, giving it the most bank holidays of the three. England and Wales has the shortest list.
For a contract between parties in different nations, the holidays that apply are usually those of the jurisdiction named in the agreement, not of whoever is counting.
Substitute days
When Christmas Day or Boxing Day falls at a weekend, the holiday moves to the following weekday. That is why some years have a bank holiday on 27 or 28 December, and why two consecutive Mondays can both be holidays.
These substitutions are set by royal proclamation rather than by a rule you can compute, which is part of why this page will not answer beyond the published list.
Why it refuses dates beyond 2028
GOV.UK publishes a rolling window of bank holidays, currently running to the end of 2028, and extends it about a year ahead each autumn. Past the end of that list, nobody knows the dates.
A calculator that carried on regardless would produce a confident wrong answer about a legal deadline, which is worse than no answer, because nothing about it would look wrong. This declines instead and says why.
Where the holidays come from
The list is read from GOV.UK and built into the page, checked 8 September 2026. It is never typed from memory, which is the same rule this site applies to tax rates and for the same reason: a figure that quietly goes stale is worse than one that is obviously missing.
Note that a bank holiday is not automatically a day off. Strictly it is a day on which banks may close, and whether you are entitled to it depends on your contract. Most contracts include them; some fold them into the annual leave allowance instead.
Common questions
- Does the start date count as a working day?
- No. Counting starts the day after, which is the convention every UK notice period and court deadline uses. "Within 5 working days of Monday" means by the following Monday, not by the Friday. The start date is excluded whether or not it is itself a working day.
- Which bank holidays does it use?
- The official list published by GOV.UK, baked into the page rather than typed from memory. England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have different holidays, so pick the right one: Scotland has 2 January and does not have Easter Monday as a bank holiday, and Northern Ireland has St Patrick’s Day and the Twelfth.
- Why does it refuse some dates?
- Because GOV.UK publishes a rolling window, currently to the end of 2028, and beyond that nobody knows the dates. A calculator that guessed would give a confident wrong answer about a legal deadline, which is worse than declining. Substitute days in particular cannot be predicted reliably: when Christmas falls at a weekend the replacement day is set by proclamation.
- Are bank holidays the same as public holidays?
- In practice yes, though strictly a bank holiday is a day banks are permitted to close, and there is no statutory right to it off work. Whether you get it depends on your contract. Good Friday and Christmas Day are common law holidays in England and Wales rather than bank holidays, but the list treats them the same because everyone else does.
- Does this handle Scottish local holidays?
- No. Scotland has local trades holidays that vary by council area and are not on the national list, so a Glasgow September weekend or an Edinburgh spring holiday will not be excluded. For anything sensitive in Scotland, check the local authority as well.