Australian Public Holidays 2026: Dates by State.

Public holiday penalty rates come from your award, not the NES, and vary widely. Customer-facing awards such as the General Retail Award, Fast Food Award, Hospitality Award, Restaurant Award, Registered Clubs Award and Hair and Beauty Award each set their own public holiday loading, commonly between 200% and 250% of the base rate. Under the NES you are entitled to a paid day off unless your employer makes a reasonable request to work. To put your own rate against the award figure, and to see what the paid day off is worth under s.116, use the public holiday pay calculator.

Not every Australian public holiday applies statewide. Queensland gazettes the Ekka for the Brisbane area only, the Northern Territory runs five separate town show days including Darwin Show Day, and Tasmania has eleven regional holidays set by municipal area, among them the Royal Hobart Regatta in the south and the Royal Launceston Show in the north. The ACT has Canberra Day, which exists nowhere else, and Victoria gazettes Melbourne Cup Day statewide but lets non-metropolitan councils substitute a local holiday instead. Victoria also stops for the football: the Friday before the AFL Grand Final is the only Australian public holiday whose date is set by a sporting fixture.

The test that decides whether one of these applies to you is the place where you are based for work purposes, not where you live, so a commuter can be entitled to a holiday that does not apply in their own suburb. Tasmania is the only state where the city calendar genuinely differs from the state one, which is why Tasmanian public holidays lists the regional dates separately, among them Recreation Day in the north of the state.

The dates move each year because several holidays are gazetted to a weekday or substituted when they fall on a weekend. The confirmed calendar for the following year is on public holidays 2027, and the dates that combine with a weekend are listed on long weekends in Australia. Taking annual leave around a public holiday does not consume that day: a public holiday falling inside a period of annual leave is paid as a public holiday, not deducted from your balance, as explained on the annual leave calculator.