When is the next public holiday?

The next public holiday anywhere in Australia is Picnic Day on Monday, 3 August 2026 in Northern Territory, 5 days away.

Why every state has a different answer

Australia has no national public holiday calendar. The seven days observed everywhere are New Year's Day, Australia Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Anzac Day, Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Every other day is set by state or territory legislation, and the states do not coordinate.

The result is that Labour Day alone falls on four different dates: March in Victoria, Tasmania and Western Australia, May in Queensland and the Northern Territory, and October in New South Wales, South Australia and the ACT. Two jurisdictions have days that exist nowhere else, with Canberra Day and Reconciliation Day both unique to the ACT. Victoria is the only state that stops for a horse race and a football match, gazetting both Melbourne Cup Day and the Friday before the AFL Grand Final.

Regional holidays are not in the table

The dates above are the statewide ones. On top of them, several jurisdictions gazette holidays that apply only to part of the state, and those can be the ones closest to you.

• Queensland gazettes the Ekka for the Brisbane area only, on the Wednesday of show week.
• The Northern Territory runs five separate town show days, including Darwin Show Day.
• Tasmania has nine regional holidays set by municipal area. The south takes the Royal Hobart Regatta in February and the north takes Recreation Day in November, and nobody gets both.

Whether a regional holiday applies to you turns on where you are based for work purposes, not where you live. A worker commuting into Brisbane from the Gold Coast gets the Ekka; a Brisbane resident working on a Sunshine Coast site does not.

What you are paid

If the public holiday falls on a day you would ordinarily work and you take it off, you are paid your base rate for those ordinary hours. That sits in the National Employment Standards, so it applies whether or not an award covers you.

If you work it, the penalty rate comes from your award rather than the NES, and commonly runs between 200% and 250% of base in customer-facing awards. Work out a specific shift on the public holiday pay calculator, or check your own award on the modern award pay pages.

Planning leave around them

A public holiday inside a booked period of annual leave is not deducted from your balance, so stacking leave against one is the cheapest way to buy time off. Our long weekends page lists the dates that already fall next to a weekend, and the annual leave calculator shows what a given block actually costs you.

For the full year ahead, see public holidays 2027, or pick your own jurisdiction: NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT.

Every upcoming date, by state

The remaining 2026 dates and all of the following year, in order. Part-day holidays are marked, because they attract public holiday rates only for the hours stated.