A public-holiday calendar records the days United Kingdom has set aside as statutory time off. National holidays apply nationwide; where an official regional or provincial list is published, those dates are included separately and clearly labelled rather than folded into the national figures. This calendar is a reference, not a legal determination of anyone's leave entitlement. Dates move for two common reasons: many countries observe a fixed-date holiday on the nearest working day when it falls at a weekend, and some observances follow lunar or other non-Gregorian reckoning that shifts against the everyday calendar. Regional holidays are always shown as regional and never added to the national count. The licence terms and the government producer behind each list are credited on the sources page.
Reading the table
The table gives the date a holiday falls on, the observance date when a weekend shift or substitute day applies, and notes published with the source. A Regional · <region> badge marks a holiday that applies only in that region; it is never counted as nationwide. Some countries publish both the original date and the observed date, so both are shown instead of silently adjusting one. Employers, schools, and individual workplaces may follow different calendars or grant extra days, so treat this table as a guide rather than an entitlement. For a wider comparison of why observance moves between countries, see why holiday dates differ between countries. The official source is always the final authority.
Where these dates come from
The United Kingdom desk covers England and Wales bank holidays from the GOV.UK bank-holidays.json feed, published under the Open Government Licence v3.0. The same feed carries the Scotland and Northern Ireland divisions, which are shown as regional so they are never counted as nationwide. Bank holidays are days when banks and many businesses close, which is not the same as a legal right to time off. The feed includes the occasional one-off bank holiday, such as a coronation or jubilee date, and a few entries marked as substitute days when a fixed date falls at a weekend. GOV.UK updates the file when a date is proclaimed or changed, so this desk is refreshed from the feed; a page here can therefore differ from a printed diary set before the change. Northern Ireland also has dates tied to its own history, such as St Patrick's Day and the Battle of the Boyne, that do not apply in Great Britain.