Switzerland Public Holidays: 26 Cantons, Many Holidays

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title: "Switzerland Public Holidays: 26 Cantons, Many Holidays"
description: "Switzerland Public Holidays: 26 Cantons, Many Holidays"
tags: ["travel", "switzerland", "holidays"]

canonical_url: https://public-holidays.shop/en/blog/guide/switzerland-public-holidays-26-cantons

Ask about switzerland holidays and you'll get two different answers from two different websites. Neither is wrong. Switzerland is a federation: 26 cantons each decide their own public holidays, and only a handful are national. This guide explains the mechanism, gives you the core swiss holidays 2026 dates, and shows you how to check a specific day without booking a hotel for a day when nobody works.

Why the holidays aren't uniform

The national level guarantees only a few days: New Year's Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, August 1 (National Day), and Christmas. Everything else belongs to the cantons. The constitution leaves holiday law to the states, so one canton gets 15 days a year and another gets 9. German speakers call them schweiz feiertage, French speakers say jours fériés, and the languages are the least confusing part.

Catholic cantons like Fribourg, Valais, and Lucerne add Corpus Christi and Assumption Day. Protestant cantons like Zurich and Bern lean on Good Friday and prayer days. So when you ask "is it a holiday in Switzerland," the honest answer is "which canton?" That's the system working as designed.

The national holidays (safe everywhere)

Watch out: St. Stephen's Day on Dec 26 is a holiday in many cantons, but it's a cantonal call, not a given. Ticino is the odd one out, with its Catholic calendar and no Good Friday, though it does take the Monday after Pentecost. Confirm the canton before you plan around the date. I learned this the hard way: I once scheduled a Bern delivery for a local prayer day nobody outside the canton had heard of.

Canton-only holidays worth knowing

• Zurich: Sechseläuten, around the third Monday in April, when a snowman gets set on fire to herald spring
• Geneva: Jeûne genevois, a fast day in September that only Geneva observes
• Basel: the Monday after Fasnacht carnival
• Lucerne, Fribourg: Corpus Christi processions through town
• Glarus: Näfelser Fahrt, a commemoration of a 14th-century battle

On these days nobody clocks in. Shops close, and the quiet gives you the most local version of Switzerland you'll ever see.

How to check a specific canton and date

Don't guess. Three steps:

1. Open public-holidays.shop, pick Switzerland, then pick your canton.
2. Check whether a date is "cantonal" before building your plan; cantonal holidays don't transfer across borders.
3. Watch for bridge days. Swiss calendars love joining a holiday to a weekend, and in 2026 Good Friday falls on a Friday, so you get a three-day weekend for free.

Banks, post offices, and cantonal offices follow the cantonal calendar. Supermarket chains mostly follow it too, while train stations run year-round. Restaurants in tourist towns tend to stay open on cantonal holidays, which is nice if you're visiting and annoying if you work in one. Check first, book after.

FAQ

How many public holidays does Switzerland have? About five national ones, plus cantonal days, for a total of 9 to 15 a year depending on the canton.

What is August 1? Swiss National Day, observed nationwide, with fireworks over the lakes. It's the one day all of Switzerland celebrates together.

When is Good Friday in swiss holidays 2026? April 3, 2026, a Friday. Pair it with Easter Monday on April 6 and you have a long weekend. Ticino, as usual, skips Good Friday.

Jeûne genevois is observed everywhere? No. It's a Geneva-only cantonal holiday, observed across the whole canton but nowhere else. These one-canton days are exactly where the Swiss system trips up visitors.

Full canton-by-canton checker: https://public-holidays.shop/en/blog/guide/switzerland-public-holidays-26-cantons