Planning time off sounds simple until a public holiday lands in the middle of your leave request and you start wondering whether it counts as a day of annual leave. This is where NSW Public Holidays become useful to understand, particularly if you’re planning holidays, checking your leave balance, or working out how many days you can actually take away from work. A few minutes with the calendar can save a surprisingly confusing conversation with payroll later.
NSW Public Holidays in 2026
NSW has a set of statewide public holidays each year, along with some local or regional holidays that apply only to particular areas.
For 2026, the statewide dates include:
- New Year’s Day — Thursday, 1 January
- Australia Day — Monday, 26 January
- Good Friday — Friday, 3 April
- Easter Saturday — Saturday, 4 April
- Easter Sunday — Sunday, 5 April
- Easter Monday — Monday, 6 April
- Anzac Day — Saturday, 25 April
- Additional Anzac Day holiday — Monday, 27 April
- King’s Birthday — Monday, 8 June
- Labour Day — Monday, 5 October
- Christmas Day — Friday, 25 December
- Boxing Day — Saturday, 26 December
- Additional Boxing Day holiday — Monday, 28 December
That little cluster around Christmas is especially handy for people planning a longer break. Depending on your normal working days and how much annual leave you have saved, a few leave days can sit around the public holidays and weekends.
Do Public Holidays Count as Annual Leave?
This is one of the questions employees ask most often.
If a public holiday occurs during your annual leave and you would normally have worked on that day, the public holiday generally isn’t deducted from your annual leave balance.
Imagine you take annual leave from Monday to Friday, and Wednesday happens to be a public holiday. If Wednesday is normally a working day for you, your employer generally shouldn’t take a full day’s annual leave from your balance for that public holiday.
You would have annual leave deducted for the ordinary working days covered by your leave, while the public holiday remains a public holiday.
It sounds obvious once you’ve seen an example, but payroll systems can make the whole thing look rather mysterious.
Annual Leave Entitlements in NSW
Most employees covered by the National Employment Standards receive four weeks of paid annual leave for each year of service.
For many full-time employees working 38 ordinary hours per week, four weeks works out to 152 hours.
A part-time employee can also receive four weeks of annual leave, based on their ordinary hours.
Say you work 20 hours each week. Four weeks would represent:
20 × 4 = 80 hours of annual leave
That doesn’t mean a part-time employee receives fewer weeks of leave. The hours are simply based on the employee’s ordinary working pattern.
Annual leave generally accumulates progressively during employment, so your balance can keep building rather than appearing only once each year.
Public Holiday Pay in NSW
A public holiday doesn’t automatically mean every employee gets a paid day off.
Your entitlement can depend on whether you’re a full-time, part-time or casual employee, your usual working pattern, and the rules that cover your job.
For a full-time or part-time employee, if a public holiday falls on a day they ordinarily work, they may be entitled to payment for their ordinary hours on that day when they are absent from work, subject to the relevant workplace rules.
Casual employees are treated differently because they generally don’t receive paid annual leave or paid public holidays in the same way permanent employees do.
Penalty rates may also apply when employees work on a public holiday. The exact rate can depend on the applicable modern award, enterprise agreement or employment contract.
So, if your payslip looks different after working Christmas Day, don’t assume something has gone wrong straight away. There may be public holiday rates involved.
NSW Public Holidays and Part-Time Employees
Part-time work can make holiday planning slightly trickier.
Suppose you normally work Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. A public holiday falls on Friday.
You might not receive a paid public holiday for Friday because Friday isn’t one of your ordinary working days.
Now flip the situation. If the public holiday falls on Monday, which is one of your regular workdays, different rules may apply.
Your roster matters.
This is also useful to remember when checking annual leave. A public holiday that falls on one of your normal working days can affect how your leave is recorded, while a public holiday on a day you don’t normally work may have no effect on your annual leave balance.
Regional and Local NSW Holidays
Not every NSW public holiday applies across the entire state.
Some holidays are specific to certain regions, districts or local government areas. The NSW public holiday calendar can therefore look slightly different depending on where you work.
The Newcastle area, for example, can have local holiday arrangements that don’t apply statewide.
If your workplace operates in a regional area, checking the official NSW public holiday list is a sensible step before making plans. A calendar app might show national holidays but miss a local date.
And yes, that can create an awkward situation when you turn up to work and half the town is already enjoying the day off.
Planning Annual Leave Around Public Holidays
Public holidays can be useful when you’re trying to stretch your annual leave.
Suppose you’re normally off on weekends and there’s a Monday public holiday. Taking Tuesday to Friday as annual leave can give you a longer break without using leave for the Monday.
Christmas and Easter can offer similar opportunities, although workplaces can get busy with leave requests around those periods.
Before submitting a request, check:
- Your current annual leave balance
- Your normal working days
- Public holidays during the requested period
- Any workplace shutdown dates
- Your employer’s leave approval process
- Whether your award or agreement has extra rules
It can also help to count working days rather than just calendar days. A ten-day holiday doesn’t necessarily require ten days of annual leave.
What Happens if a Public Holiday Falls During Leave?
If you’re already on annual leave and a public holiday occurs during that period, the day is generally treated as a public holiday rather than annual leave if you would normally have worked that day.
For example, imagine you take leave from Friday 2 October through Tuesday 6 October 2026. Labour Day in NSW falls on Monday, 5 October.
If Monday is normally a working day for you, it would generally be treated as the public holiday rather than deducted as annual leave.
That can leave you with one extra day of your leave balance compared with simply counting every weekday on the calendar.
A small detail, perhaps. But if you’ve spent months saving those hours, it matters.
Using a Leave Calculator With the NSW Holiday Calendar
A leave calculator can make this planning easier. You can start with your current annual leave balance, check your ordinary working hours and then look at the dates you’re considering.
Add the NSW public holidays that fall inside your planned break.
Then count the ordinary working days that remain.
This gives you a clearer idea of how much leave your holiday may actually use. It also makes it easier to compare two possible sets of dates before you send that leave request to your manager.
One thing to remember: calculator results are estimates. Your payroll records, award, agreement and employment arrangements should be checked if you’re unsure about a particular entitlement.
A public holiday can look like just another coloured square on a calendar. Once it sits next to your annual leave balance, though, it becomes part of your actual holiday plans.
And sometimes that little square is exactly what turns a few days of leave into a much longer break.
