Germany bridge days 2027: vacation days by state

Bridge days in 2027 at a glance

A bridge day is a single working day between a public holiday and the weekend, and 2027 has two of them. Ascension Day (Christi Himmelfahrt) is on Thursday, May 6, 2027, and Corpus Christi (Fronleichnam) on Thursday, May 27, 2027. Corpus Christi, however, is a statewide holiday only in Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland; in Saxony and Thuringia it applies in certain municipalities only.

On top of that, there are stretches where a few vacation days add up to a long break: Easter, Whitsun (Pentecost) and two holidays on a Wednesday, Epiphany (Heilige Drei Könige) in three states and the Day of Repentance and Prayer (Buß- und Bettag) in Saxony. The figures in the table come from the working days calculator. Vacation days are the working days from Monday to Friday in the period, days off are all calendar days. States appear as the codes the API uses, such as BY for Bavaria.

Vacation days and days off in 2027

Easter, Whitsun and Corpus Christi in detail

Good Friday (Karfreitag) on March 26, 2027, and Easter Monday (Ostermontag) on March 29, 2027 apply in every state. Taking the four working days after Easter gives you 10 days off in a row; adding the week before gives you 16 days for 8 vacation days. In Brandenburg, Easter Sunday is also a public holiday, but it always falls on a Sunday and does not change the count.

Whit Monday (Pfingstmontag) falls on May 17, 2027, and Corpus Christi follows ten days later. In the states with Corpus Christi, 8 vacation days cover the 16 days from the Saturday before Whitsun to the Sunday after Corpus Christi; in the other states it takes 9. Ascension Day is eleven days before Whit Monday and works on its own with the bridge day.

Wednesday holidays and long weekends

In Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and Saxony-Anhalt, Epiphany falls on the Wednesday after New Year's Day, which is a Friday. With 2 vacation days on Monday and Tuesday, you are off from January 1, 2027 to January 6, 2027, 6 days in total, or 10 days with the whole week. The Day of Repentance and Prayer in Saxony falls on November 17, 2027; 2 vacation days on the Thursday and Friday after it give you 5 days off.

Without any vacation, 2027 has long weekends at New Year in every state, on International Women's Day in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, on World Children's Day in Thuringia and on All Saints' Day in Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland. Each of these holidays falls on a Monday or a Friday.

Holidays that fall on a weekend in 2027

Nine public holidays apply in every state. Four of them fall on a Saturday or Sunday in 2027: May 1 (Labor Day) and Christmas Day on a Saturday, German Unity Day on October 3 and December 26 on a Sunday. In nine states, Reformation Day (Reformationstag) on October 31 is also a Sunday, and in Saarland so is Assumption Day (Mariä Himmelfahrt) on August 15.

There is no substitute day. The state public holiday laws (Feiertagsgesetze) tie holidays to fixed calendar dates or to dates that follow Easter, and none of them moves a holiday to the following Monday. For a five-day week, no working time is lost on these days, so there is also nothing to pay as holiday pay under § 2(1) of the Continued Remuneration Act (EFZG).

Because so many holidays fall on a weekend, 2027 has more working days than 2026. Lower Saxony has 256 instead of 254, Bavaria 253 instead of 252.

Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve fall on a Friday in 2027. Neither is a public holiday. Whether employees get the day off depends on the employment contract or the collective agreement (Tarifvertrag).

Public holidays and working days in 2027 by state

Differences between states

The total counts every public holiday in a state, including regional ones and those that always fall on a Sunday, such as Easter Sunday and Whit Sunday in Brandenburg. The working days only deduct statewide holidays from Monday to Friday. That gives Bavaria 253 working days in 2027 and Lower Saxony 256.

Which bridge days apply depends on the state where the work is done, not on where the company is registered. In May 2027, a site in Bavaria has 18 working days and one in Lower Saxony 19. If you calculate target hours or day rates per month, you need working days for each site, as the use case on public holidays in shift planning by location shows.

The working days calculator only deducts Corpus Christi in parts of Saxony and Thuringia if you set regionale=true. For a site in one of those municipalities, May 27, 2027, is a holiday and the Friday after it a bridge day, just as in Hesse.

Part-time work and six-day weeks

The figures above assume a five-day week. If you work fewer days, only your own working days count for vacation. The statutory minimum is converted accordingly: 24 working days times working days per week divided by six, which gives 12 days for a three-day week. If the bridge day falls on a day you would not work anyway, you do not need a vacation day for it.

Conversely, a holiday on a day you do not work adds nothing. Someone who does not work on Mondays loses no working time on Easter Monday or Whit Monday, so there is neither an extra day off nor holiday pay under § 2(1) EFZG. Someone who has Fridays off needs no vacation for the bridge day after Ascension Day.

If a team also works on Saturdays, the calculator counts Monday to Saturday with samstag=true. For the long weekend around Ascension Day, that means 2 vacation days instead of 1: the Friday and the Saturday.

An example with three sites

A team works in Munich, Frankfurt am Main and Hamburg. In May 2027, the Munich site has 18 working days, Frankfurt 18 and Hamburg 19. The difference is Corpus Christi on May 27, 2027: the day is off in Bavaria and Hesse, but not in Hamburg.

For planning, that means a joint meeting in the week of Corpus Christi belongs on Monday to Wednesday. Calculate target hours and day rates per site, and let Hamburg cover the Friday after Corpus Christi if Munich and Frankfurt take the bridge day.

Planning bridge days as a team

• Collect requests early: employees' vacation wishes must be taken into account unless urgent operational needs or the wishes of colleagues who deserve priority on social grounds stand in the way (§ 7(1) of the Federal Leave Act, BUrlG). The law names social criteria as the yardstick, not the order in which requests come in.
• With a works council (Betriebsrat): general vacation principles and the vacation schedule are subject to co-determination (§ 87(1) no. 5 BetrVG). If everyone is to take a bridge day off, for example as a company shutdown, that only works together with the works council.
• Holidays do not use up vacation: only working days count as vacation days, public holidays do not (§ 3(2) BUrlG).
• Unexcused absence: anyone who misses the last working day before or the first working day after a public holiday without an excuse is not paid for the holiday (§ 2(3) EFZG).
• Across state lines: do not schedule meetings for teams at several sites on a holiday of one of those sites, such as Corpus Christi or All Saints' Day on November 1, 2027.

Public holidays in payroll

Employees paid by the hour receive, for working time lost because of a public holiday, the pay they would have earned without the holiday (§ 2(1) EFZG). In May 2027, that covers Ascension Day, Whit Monday and, depending on the state, Corpus Christi. A bridge day, by contrast, is only paid as a vacation day or as a working day.

Anyone who works on a public holiday can receive premiums of up to 125 percent of base pay tax-free, and up to 150 percent on May 1 and on both Christmas holidays. The rates and limits are in the tax-free premiums for Sunday, holiday and night work dataset.

Checklist for HR

• Set up the 2027 holiday calendar for each site and check regional holidays for each municipality.
• Agree with the works council whether there will be company shutdowns on bridge days, before the first vacation requests come in.
• Recalculate target hours per month and site using the 2027 working days.
• Settle Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve: both are Fridays in 2027 and neither is a public holiday.
• Check shift schedules for holidays: work on public holidays is only allowed under an exception to the ban on holiday work (§ 9 of the Working Hours Act, ArbZG).

Check periods off via the API

import os
from quellenkontor import Quellenkontor

qk = Quellenkontor(api_key=os.environ["QK_KEY"])

# Vacation days and days off for three periods in 2027 in Hesse
periods = [("2027-03-26", "2027-04-04"), ("2027-05-06", "2027-05-09"), ("2027-05-15", "2027-05-30")]
for von, bis in periods:
    r = qk.hr.arbeitstage(von=von, bis=bis, land="HE")
    print(von, bis, r["arbeitstage"], "vacation days,", r["kalendertage"], "days off")

# Output
# 2027-03-26 2027-04-04 4 vacation days, 10 days off
# 2027-05-06 2027-05-09 1 vacation days, 4 days off
# 2027-05-15 2027-05-30 8 vacation days, 16 days off

Planning with the API

For vacation planning, the working days calculator is usually enough, with one call per period and site. If a team also works on Saturdays, samstag=true counts working days from Monday to Saturday. The example above uses the Python SDK; the same calls work via REST, CLI or MCP. For a spreadsheet, qk feiertage --jahr 2027 --land HE --format csv exports a state's holidays as CSV.

The list of public holidays by state and year, with weekday and a flag for regional holidays, is on the public holidays 2027 by state page. The data runs to 2035, so you can already work out the bridge days for 2028.

All parameters, including samstag and regionale, are listed in the working days calculator reference.