Working days in France in 2027: 254 days, month by month

2027 has 254 working days (jours ouvrés) in metropolitan France, outside the local regime of Alsace-Moselle: 365 calendar days, less 104 weekend days, less 7 public holidays that fall between Monday and Friday. That is two days more than 2026, which had 252, because four of the eleven statutory public holidays of 2027 fall on a Saturday or a Sunday.

This table assumes that all eleven statutory public holidays are days off in the company. That is the most common practice, but only 1 May is a mandatory day off by law (Article L3133-4 of the French Labour Code): for the other ten, the collective agreement, a company agreement or established practice decides. If your business works on some public holidays, add them back to the count for the month concerned.

May 2027: 19 working days, the shortest month#

May 2027 has 19 working days and 22 jours ouvrables. Two public holidays fall on a weekday: Ascension Day on Thursday 6 May and Whit Monday on 17 May. 1 May and 8 May both fall on a Saturday: they remove no working day, but each removes one jour ouvrable. May remains the shortest month of the year, but with two more days than in 2026, when it had only 17 working days.

December 2027: 23 working days, the longest month#

December 2027 has 23 working days, the longest month of the year. Christmas falls on Saturday 25 December, so it removes no working day. Between May (19 working days) and December (23), the gap reaches four days for two 31-day months, which matters for any activity billed by the day.

By quarter and by half-year#

Working days break down as follows: 62 in the first quarter, 63 in the second, 65 in the third and 64 in the fourth. The second half of the year (129 days) has four more than the first (125), which is worth knowing when spreading a workload or an annual sales target.

Article L3133-1 of the French Labour Code sets the list of the eleven statutory public holidays. In 2027, seven fall between Monday and Friday and four fall on a weekend.

Under the general rules, a public holiday that falls on a Saturday or a Sunday does not give a replacement day off: only a provision of the collective agreement or of a company agreement can grant one. For businesses open on Saturdays, however, the three Saturday holidays (1 May, 8 May and 25 December) do weigh on the count in jours ouvrables.

1 May 2027 falls on a Saturday#

1 May remains a mandatory day off, including on a Saturday, for employees who normally work that day, and taking it off cannot reduce their pay. In establishments that cannot interrupt work because of the nature of their activity, an employee who works on 1 May is entitled, on top of the pay for the work done, to an allowance equal to that pay (Article L3133-6 of the French Labour Code). For employees who do not work on Saturdays, 1 May 2027 has no effect.

Two public holidays of 2027 fall on a Thursday and open a bridge (pont) for a single day of leave.

Four other public holidays create a three-day weekend with no leave to take: Friday 1 January, Easter Monday 29 March, Whit Monday 17 May and All Saints' Day on Monday 1 November.

Granting a bridge is not an obligation, and a bridge day is not a statutory day off. Depending on the applicable agreement, it is charged to paid leave or rest days, or made up later. A team that grants the Ascension bridge has only 18 days of attendance in May 2027.

The number of jours ouvrables does not move, while the number of working days gains two: in 2027, three public holidays fall on a Saturday, against only one in 2026. They remove nothing from Monday to Friday, but they do remove jours ouvrables. This gap explains why the same employee's entitlements can be counted differently depending on whether the company reasons in jours ouvrés or in jours ouvrables.

• Jours ouvrés (working days): Monday to Friday, excluding public holidays taken off. This is the basis for schedules, production capacity and the leave count when the company counts in jours ouvrés (25 days for five weeks).
• Jours ouvrables: every day except Sunday and public holidays taken off, so Monday to Saturday. This is the statutory basis for paid leave: 2.5 jours ouvrables per month of actual work (Article L3141-3 of the French Labour Code), i.e. 30 jours ouvrables for a full year.
• Calendar days: every day of the year, weekends and public holidays included. They are used in particular for time limits expressed in calendar days.

A full-time employee on 35 hours, with no RTT days, who takes the five weeks of paid leave works 229 days in 2027: 254 working days less 25 days of paid leave counted in jours ouvrés.

The solidarity day is not deducted from this total. It is an additional working day, unpaid (7 hours for a full-time employee), added to working time; the employer pays alongside it a contribution of 0.3% of the payroll. Its date is set by a company or sector agreement, failing which by the employer: a public holiday other than 1 May, an RTT day or a split into hours over the year. Whit Monday, 17 May 2027, remains a common choice, but it is no longer a default date.

Managers on a day-based package: 11 rest days in 2027#

The individual annual day-based agreement (forfait jours) caps working time at 218 days a year (Article L3121-64 of the French Labour Code), solidarity day included. The 2027 rest-day calculation is as follows: 365 calendar days, less 104 weekend days, less 7 weekday public holidays, less 25 days of paid leave, less the 218 days of the package, i.e. 11 rest days.

That is two days more than in 2026 (9 days). The figure changes every year with the position of public holidays: it is recalculated for each year and should not be carried over unchanged into an agreement or an amendment.

Part-time over 4 days: the day off changes the result#

For an employee working 80% over four days a week, the number of working days in 2027 depends on which day they do not work. A public holiday falling on their day off gives them no day back, unless a more favourable agreement applies, and three public holidays of 2027 fall on a Monday.

The employee who does not work on Mondays therefore works three days more than the one who does not work on Tuesdays or Fridays. This is not a payroll error: it is the calendar. The one who does not work on Fridays also has one workable weekday fewer than the others (208 against 209): 2027 starts and ends on a Friday, and therefore has 53 Fridays against 52 of each other weekday.

The Bas-Rhin, Haut-Rhin and Moselle departments apply two additional public holidays. 26 December, Saint Stephen's Day, applies in all three departments; Good Friday is a public holiday only in towns that have a Protestant church or a shared church (Article L3134-13 of the French Labour Code).

• Good Friday, Friday 26 March 2027, in the towns concerned: it removes 1 working day and 1 jour ouvrable.
• Saint Stephen's Day, Sunday 26 December 2027: it falls on a Sunday and removes neither a working day nor a jour ouvrable.

2027 result: 253 working days and 302 jours ouvrables in towns where Good Friday is a public holiday, 254 and 303 in the other towns of the three departments. In 2026, Saint Stephen's Day fell on a Saturday and removed one jour ouvrable: the position of the two dates needs checking every year.

For a specific period, a notice period, an assignment or a time limit expressed in working days, count the Monday to Friday days of the period, then remove the public holidays from the list above that fall on a weekday within it. Example: from Monday 3 May to Friday 28 May 2027 there are 20 days from Monday to Friday, less Ascension Day and Whit Monday, i.e. 18 working days.

The working days calculator does this count for a year, a month or any period: select 2027 in the year selector.

• Production capacity: with constant headcount and organisation, 254 working days against 252 in 2026 represent about 0.8% more available days.
• Day-based packages: managers on a 218-day package have 11 rest days to take in 2027, against 9 in 2026. Plan them from the start of the year to avoid carry-overs at year end.
• Day-rate billing: a freelancer or a firm billing by the day has 254 working days before leave, training and non-billable days, with a low point in May (19 days) and a peak in December (23 days).
• Payroll: monthly salarisation (mensualisation) smooths base pay, which does not depend on the number of working days in the month. Items calculated per working day, such as meal vouchers (titres-restaurant), do however follow the number of days actually worked each month.

To estimate the full cost of a hire or a salary in 2027, the employer cost calculator gives an immediate order of magnitude.

The 254 working days of 2027 are a theoretical ceiling. An employee's actual working time starts from 229 days for a full-time 35-hour employee, from which you still need to deduct the RTT days set by the agreement, contractual leave and absences. For a payroll budget or a workload plan, it is this net figure, specific to each company, that serves as the basis, not the number of working days in the calendar. The detail of 2026, still useful for adjustments, remains available in our article on working days in 2026.