Working days in France in 2026: 252 days, month by month

2026 has 252 working days (jours ouvrés, Monday to Friday, bank holidays deducted), 303 workable days (jours ouvrables, Monday to Saturday, bank holidays deducted) and 365 calendar days. Of the 11 statutory bank holidays, 9 fall on a weekday: only Assumption (Saturday 15 August) and All Saints' Day (Sunday 1 November) land on the weekend. A full-time employee taking five weeks of paid leave works 227 days. A manager on a 218-day forfait jours package has 9 rest days to schedule across the year.

Planning a payroll budget, a daily rate (TJM, taux journalier moyen) or a resourcing schedule for 2026? The number of working days in France in 2026 is a basic data point, yet it generates more confusion than any other: calendar days, jours ouvrables, jours ouvrés, bank holidays, paid leave, RTT, the solidarity day. Using the wrong figure distorts your payroll cost forecasts and weakens your simulations.

2026 has a favourable calendar: nine bank holidays fall on a weekday, only two land on the weekend. The starting point is therefore 252 working days, but that gross figure alone cannot drive a budget or frame a forfait jours agreement.

Here is the complete year, month by month. Jours ouvrés run Monday to Friday and jours ouvrables Monday to Saturday, in both cases with bank holidays deducted.

This table assumes the 11 statutory bank holidays are non-working in your company, which is overwhelmingly the practice but is a legal obligation only for 1 May. If your collective agreement makes some bank holidays working days, add them back to the relevant month.

Working days in May 2026: 17, the shortest month of the year#

May 2026 has only 17 working days and 22 jours ouvrables. The month does contain 21 days from Monday to Friday, but four of them are bank holidays: Friday 1 May, Friday 8 May, Thursday 14 May (Ascension) and Monday 25 May (Whit Monday). No other month in 2026 concentrates so many.

For any business billing by time spent, May 2026 delivers close to a quarter less capacity than a full 22-day month. It is the year's key cash-flow watchpoint: the May billing trough is paid for in June or July depending on your payment terms.

Working days in July 2026: 22, despite Bastille Day#

July 2026 has 22 working days and 26 jours ouvrables. The month contains 23 days from Monday to Friday, with a single bank holiday, Tuesday 14 July. July therefore ranks among the fullest months of the year, level with March, June, September, October and December.

Because 14 July falls on a Tuesday, Monday 13 July is the natural bridge day: a single day of leave opens four consecutive days off, from Saturday 11 to Tuesday 14 July.

Working days in August and October 2026#

August 2026 has 21 working days and 25 jours ouvrables. Assumption falls on a Saturday: it removes no jour ouvré, but it does remove one jour ouvrable, since jours ouvrables include Saturdays. This is the most common counting trap of the month.

October 2026 has 22 working days and 27 jours ouvrables, with no bank holiday at all. It is the densest month of the year in jours ouvrables. An employee taking a full week off in October is charged 6 jours ouvrables against 5 jours ouvrés: the gap between the two counting methods peaks in this month.

How to read this table in a capacity plan#

Three concrete uses for the monthly breakdown.

1. Smoothing revenue. A provider billing by time spent does not generate the same revenue in May (17 days) and July (22 days). The gap is 5 days, close to a full week of production.
2. Staff cost accruals. A monthly accrual based on one twelfth of the year ignores this imbalance. Reconciling the accrual with actual production is done on the month's working days, not on the calendar.
3. Leave planning. Months with 22 working days absorb absences better than months with 17 or 20. February, May and November are the three months to watch in 2026.

To run the calculation on your own dates rather than the calendar year, our working days calculator handles a year, a month or a free period, with paid leave deducted.

Article L3133-1 of the French Labour Code lists eleven statutory bank holidays. In 2026 their distribution is favourable: nine fall on a working day (Monday to Friday), two fall on the weekend.

The two holidays falling on the weekend (15 August and 1 November) do not reduce the working-day count and do not generally entitle employees to a day in lieu, unless a collective agreement (convention collective) provides otherwise.

The spread of the nine weekday holidays is worth noting, because it does not benefit everyone equally: three fall on a Friday (1 May, 8 May, 25 December), two on a Monday (6 April, 25 May), two on a Thursday (1 January, 14 May), one on a Tuesday (14 July) and one on a Wednesday (11 November). We return below to what this means for part-time employees.

The confusion between these notions is common, including in HR documents drafted by non-specialists. Each has a specific application.

Jours ouvrables or jours ouvrés: what is the difference?#

The gap between the 303 jours ouvrables and the 252 jours ouvrés of 2026 is 51 days. It corresponds to the 52 Saturdays of the year, less Saturday 15 August, already counted as a bank holiday.

The jours ouvrables calculation for 2026, step by step:

1. 365 calendar days less 52 Sundays gives 313 days from Monday to Saturday.
2. Of the 11 statutory bank holidays, 10 fall between Monday and Saturday: only All Saints' Day, 1 November, falls on a Sunday and merges with the weekly rest day.
3. 313 less 10 gives 303 jours ouvrables.

Beware the figure of 313 that circulates widely: it is the count of Monday-to-Saturday days before bank holidays are deducted. It does not match the definition used by the French administration, which excludes both the weekly rest day and customarily non-working bank holidays. Using 313 as the number of jours ouvrables overstates the paid-leave accrual base by 10 days.

Statutory paid leave accrues in jours ouvrables: an employee accrues 2.5 jours ouvrables per month of effective work, totalling 30 jours ouvrables for a full year. Many collective agreements have moved to a jours ouvrés basis, that is 25 days for five weeks. Both methods are lawful, but a jours ouvrés count must never be less favourable to the employee than the statutory count.

For payroll budgets and capacity simulations, jours ouvrés are the correct basis. For statutory deadlines (notice, termination, contractual delivery), check whether the relevant text refers to calendar days or jours ouvrables.

The basic calculation is straightforward arithmetic.

1. Days in the year: 365
2. Less weekends (52 Saturdays and 52 Sundays): -104
3. Gross working days subtotal: 261
4. Less bank holidays falling on weekdays: -9
5. Theoretical working days 2026: 252

One useful calendar detail: 2026 begins on a Thursday and ends on a Thursday. The year therefore contains 53 Thursdays, and 52 of each of the six other weekdays. That is why there are 261 Monday-to-Friday days rather than 260.

This figure of 252 is the reference base for everything that follows. It assumes a full-time employee working Monday to Friday, with all bank holidays treated as non-working. It is a theoretical ceiling, not an actual presence count.

A full-time employee taking five weeks of paid leave works 227 days in 2026: 252 jours ouvrés less 25 paid-leave days counted in jours ouvrés.

The solidarity day is not deducted from this total. It is a worked day, unpaid, that adds to working time rather than reducing it: deducting it would count a working day as an absence. Depending on the arrangement chosen by agreement, it is placed on a formerly non-working bank holiday, it consumes one RTT day, or it is spread in hours across the year. In all three cases, the 227-day benchmark remains the calculation base.

These figures exclude unplanned absences (illness, childcare, training). For a prudent budget, an absence provision of 5 to 8 days per employee remains reasonable depending on the sector.

Manager on a forfait jours package: 218 days and 9 rest days#

The individual forfait jours agreement caps working time at 218 days per year (article L3121-64 of the Labour Code), solidarity day included. The calculation of additional rest days in 2026 is as follows:

365 calendar days less 104 weekend days, less 9 bank holidays on weekdays, less 25 paid-leave days, less the 218 days of the package, equals 9 rest days.

Those 9 days come on top of five weeks of paid leave. The figure changes every year with the position of the bank holidays: it is specific to 2026 and should not be carried over verbatim into an agreement.

Part-time, 4 days out of 5: the day off changes the result#

Pro-rating at 0.8 gives 202 jours ouvrés and 20 paid-leave days, so around 182 days worked. But that theoretical result hides a very real calendar effect, which the 2026 spread of bank holidays makes particularly visible.

A part-time employee working 4 days out of 5 who never works on Fridays loses the benefit of 3 of the 9 bank holidays of the year (1 May, 8 May and 25 December all fall on a Friday). One who does not work on Wednesdays loses only one, Armistice Day. On identical contracts, the gap between the two situations is 2 rest days over the year. Part-time agreements rarely address this point, and it regularly surfaces as a claim.

At 35 hours per week, that is 7 hours per working day, 2026 offers 1,764 theoretical hours: 252 jours ouvrés multiplied by 7 hours. After five weeks of paid leave, 1,589 hours remain, plus the 7 hours of the solidarity day, giving 1,596 hours actually worked.

The reference used in working-time arrangement agreements remains 1,607 hours per year. That figure is a convention, not a calendar count: it is built on 365 days, less 104 weekend days, less 25 paid-leave days and less 8 weekday bank holidays (a multi-year average), giving 228 days at 7 hours rounded to 1,600 hours, plus the 7 hours of the solidarity day. In 2026 the real calendar gives 9 weekday bank holidays instead of the average of 8: the actual annual load is therefore around 11 hours below the 1,607-hour reference.

Reading the table: all three arrangements converge on the same annual load, around 1,590 hours. That is precisely the purpose of RTT days, which bring a weekly duration above 35 hours back to the statutory duration over the year.

The RTT calculation runs as follows: hours worked above 35, multiplied by the number of weeks worked, divided by the length of a day. In 2026, 227 days worked correspond to 45.4 weeks. For a 39-hour schedule: 4 hours multiplied by 45.4 weeks gives 181.6 hours, divided by a 7.8-hour day, so 23.3 RTT days. This is an order of magnitude: the enforceable number of RTT days is the one set by your company or sector agreement, often rounded and sometimes fixed as a lump sum.

The method takes six steps, in this order.

1. Start from the working days of the year: 252 in 2026.
2. Deduct paid leave counted in jours ouvrés: 25 for five weeks.
3. Deduct RTT days provided by the company or sector agreement.
4. Deduct seniority leave and any contractual leave specific to your collective agreement.
5. Do not deduct the solidarity day: it is a worked day, unpaid.
6. Deduct actual absences over the year: illness, training, family-event leave.

The most frequent error remains the double deduction of bank holidays. The starting point of 252 days is already net of the 9 bank holidays falling on weekdays: deducting them a second time distorts the result by 9 days, close to two weeks of production on an annual budget.

Bas-Rhin, Haut-Rhin and Moselle apply two additional statutory bank holidays. Saint Stephen's Day, 26 December, applies across all three departments. Good Friday, however, is a public holiday only in municipalities with a Protestant church or a mixed church, article L3134-13 of the Labour Code expressly restricting the regime to those municipalities. In 2026, those two dates do not weigh on the count in the same way.

• Good Friday, Friday 3 April 2026, in the municipalities concerned. It is both a jour ouvré and a jour ouvrable under the general regime. It therefore removes 1 jour ouvré and 1 jour ouvrable from the local count, where it applies.
• Saint Stephen's Day, Saturday 26 December 2026. It is a Saturday. It removes no jour ouvré, since jours ouvrés stop at Friday, but it does remove 1 jour ouvrable, since jours ouvrables include Saturdays.

Result for 2026 in the three departments concerned: 251 jours ouvrés and 301 jours ouvrables.

The shortcut "two extra bank holidays, therefore two fewer working days" is wrong this year: only one of the two local holidays falls on a weekday. This needs checking every year, as the position of the two dates within the week changes from one year to the next.

The count of 251 jours ouvrés and 301 jours ouvrables therefore applies to an establishment where both local bank holidays are observed. In a municipality with no Protestant or mixed church, only Saint Stephen's Day applies, and the count of jours ouvrés stays that of the general regime.

Only 1 May (Labour Day) is a bank holiday legally required to be both non-working and paid for all private-sector employees, under article L3133-4 of the Labour Code. For the other ten bank holidays, the general rule does not impose a day off: it is the collective agreement, company agreement or established custom that decides.

In practice, the overwhelming majority of French businesses treat all eleven bank holidays as non-working. But check your collective agreement before assuming that a bank holiday is automatically a day off in your sector, in particular in hospitality, food service, retail and transport.

The solidarity day (journée de solidarité) for elderly and disabled people remains compulsory in 2026. It represents one additional unpaid working day for employees (7 hours for a full-time employee) and a payroll levy of 0.3% of total gross wages for the employer.

The employer sets the date by company or sector agreement, or in the absence of an agreement by unilateral decision. Whit Monday (25 May 2026) is a frequently chosen date, but it has not been the default one since 2008: other dates are possible, an RTT day, a bank holiday other than 1 May, or any other arrangement provided by agreement.

For managers on a forfait jours package, the solidarity day is absorbed within the 218-day ceiling: it does not add a day beyond that limit, which simplifies payroll administration.

Three bank holidays in 2026 allow a bridge with a single day of leave. Here are the sequences to put in a team schedule.

Five further bank holidays mechanically create a three-day weekend without any leave being taken: three fall on a Friday (1 May, 8 May, 25 December) and two on a Monday (Easter Monday on 6 April, Whit Monday on 25 May).

The year's watchpoint remains May 2026 and its 17 working days. With four weekday bank holidays and two natural bridges around Ascension, a department that grants bridges generously can fall below 15 days of actual presence over the month.

A useful reminder: granting a bridge is not an obligation, and a bridge granted is not a non-working day as of right. Depending on the applicable agreement, it is charged to paid leave, to RTT days, or made up later. A bridge imposed by the employer follows the rules on setting leave dates, with the notice period provided by agreement or custom.

On the engagements we handle, a full-time freelancer works in the region of 210 to 220 days in 2026 but bills only 150 to 170. These are the firm's own orders of magnitude: no public statistics measure freelancers' billable days. These two figures are not contradictory: the first measures days of work, the second days sold. Confusing them is the leading cause of an underpriced daily rate.

In practice, across our consultant and liberal-profession files, the realistic zone sits between 150 and 170 billable days. The upper ranges in the table assume an established practice, a steady order book and outsourced administration.

The gap between a stated daily rate and actual income almost always traces back to an overestimated billable-day count. A consultant who prices on 220 days and bills only 160 is working at an effective daily rate more than a quarter below their headline figure. Correcting that assumption is the first useful step before any income simulation.

The number of days worked feeds directly into the calculation of actual home-to-work travel expenses (frais réels) in the French income tax return. The mileage scale applies to the round-trip distance, multiplied by the number of days the journey was actually made.

The starting point for a full-time employee in 2026 is 227 days worked, that is 252 jours ouvrés less 25 paid-leave days. You then deduct RTT days, seniority or contractual leave, remote-working days and absences. An employee on 39 hours with 23 RTT days and two remote-working days per week falls well below 130 actual commuting days.

Three rules to know before filling in the box:

1. Remote-working days are not home-to-work journeys. Including them in the count exposes the taxpayer to an adjustment.
2. The distance retained is in principle limited to 40 kilometres one way. Beyond that, administrative doctrine allows the deduction where the taxpayer justifies particular circumstances other than personal convenience: job relocation or transfer, family constraints tied to a spouse's occupation or children's schooling, the health of the taxpayer or a close relative, a disproportionate gap in housing costs, holding a local elective office, or difficulty finding work in the area of residence.
3. Actual expenses replace the standard 10% allowance, they are not added to it. The option is only worthwhile if total actual expenses exceed that allowance.

Our mileage expense simulator applies the scale in force to the number of days you enter.

A credible payroll budget cannot start from 252 days. It must incorporate an actual presence assumption, which means setting explicit parameters: weekly hours, RTT, contractual leave, absence provision.

The number of working days is also the basis for pro-rata calculations, holiday pay and absence indemnities. An error on this point in a payslip can generate salary catch-ups or overpayments. Understanding a French payslip requires mastering these fundamentals, and payroll outsourcing does not remove the need to set these assumptions.

Before costing a hire, our employer cost calculator converts a gross salary into a full cost, to be read against the presence figure retained here.

The 252-day figure is a useful starting point, but it says nothing about actual productivity or real workload. In our practice, business owners who use it without adjustment make two symmetrical errors: they overestimate their teams' capacity, forgetting RTT, absences and training, and they underestimate the real cost of their freelancers, forgetting that 30 to 40% of a freelancer's time is not billable.

The useful question is not "how many working days are there in 2026?" but "how many days can my organisation actually deploy over the year, and at what unit cost?" It is that second calculation that feeds a budget, a daily rate or a hiring decision.

One last methodological note. The figures on this page are recalculated from the 2026 civil calendar and from the list of bank holidays in article L3133-1 of the Labour Code. Several online sources publish diverging values for 2026, in particular on jours ouvrables and on the number of bank holidays falling on weekdays. The check is within everyone's reach: 365 less 52 Sundays gives 313 Monday-to-Saturday days, and 10 of the 11 bank holidays fall between Monday and Saturday, which does give 303 jours ouvrables.

Updated 28 August 2026. This article is for information purposes only and does not replace tailored professional advice. For your specific situation, consult a chartered accountant (expert-comptable) registered with the Ordre des experts-comptables.