Account for public holidays by location in shift planning
Public holidays for each location in the plan automatically, regional holidays included.
For shift planning, you need the public holidays of the state (Bundesland) where a location is, not those of the head office. Bavaria, for example, has 14 public holidays in 2026, including regional ones. Other states have fewer. The API returns them by state and year, with the weekday.
Assign each location to its state.
Fetch the public holidays for the planning year for each state and check regional holidays for each location.
Mark days off and premiums in the plan and recalculate target hours.
The location decides
What counts is the public holiday law (Feiertagsgesetz) of the state where the work is done. In a company based in Hamburg with a warehouse in Bavaria, Epiphany (Heilige Drei Könige) is a day off in Bavaria but not in Hamburg.
Regional holidays apply only in part of a state, such as Corpus Christi (Fronleichnam) in parts of Saxony and Thuringia or the Augsburg Peace Festival (Augsburger Friedensfest). The API marks them and says where they apply. You decide once, when you assign a location, whether it is affected.
What planning does with it
- Block days off for each location in the shift plan, or staff them with a premium.
- Recalculate target hours per month with the working days calculator.
- Treat Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve separately: they are not public holidays, but from 2 p.m. they count like holidays for premiums under § 3b of the Income Tax Act (EStG).
Plan years ahead
Public holidays are available from 2015 to 2035, movable and fixed, plus one-off holidays as soon as a state has adopted them. The tables for the current and the next year are on the public holidays page.
What the call looks like
Example with the dataset Public holidays. The response comes from the same code as the API.
Frequently asked questions
Which public holidays count for a location?
Those of the state where the location is. Regional holidays only count if the location is in the area concerned.
Are Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve public holidays?
No, neither is a public holiday. The contract or collective agreement decides whether employees get the day off.
How far ahead are public holidays available?
Up to 2035. The weekly check adds new one-off holidays as soon as a state has adopted them.
Datasets used
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