How Many Days in a Year Excluding Weekends? (2026 and Beyond)

A standard year has 365 days. Take out every Saturday and Sunday and you are left with 260 or 261 days, depending on where the year starts and ends on the calendar. In 2026 the answer is 261.

If you also remove US federal holidays, 2026 has 250 working days. Here is where those numbers come from, how they change from year to year, and how to calculate them for any period you need.

Quick answer

| Year | Total days | Weekend days | Days excluding weekends | Days excluding weekends and US federal holidays | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 2025 | 365 | 104 | 261 | 250 | | 2026 | 365 | 104 | 261 | 250 | | 2027 | 365 | 104 | 261 | 250 | | 2028 (leap year) | 366 | 106 | 260 | 249 | | 2029 | 365 | 104 | 261 | 250 |

Holiday counts assume all 11 federal holidays are observed on a weekday. In each of the years above they are, either on their actual date or on the substitute Friday or Monday used when the holiday lands on a weekend.

Why the number is 260 or 261, not a fixed figure

The math starts with a simple observation: 365 days is 52 full weeks plus one extra day.

• 52 weeks contain 52 Saturdays and 52 Sundays, which is 104 weekend days
• 52 weeks also contain 52 x 5 = 260 weekdays
• The one leftover day is whatever day of the week January 1 happens to be

If January 1 falls on a Monday through Friday, that extra day is a weekday and the year has 261 days without weekends. If January 1 is a Saturday or Sunday, the extra day is a weekend day and the year has only 260.

In 2026, January 1 is a Thursday, so the year has 261 weekdays.

Leap years

A leap year has 366 days, which is 52 weeks plus two extra days. Those two days are always consecutive (for example Monday and Tuesday, or Saturday and Sunday), so a leap year can have 260, 261, or 262 weekdays.

Many articles say a leap year always has 262 working days. That is not correct. 2024 did have 262 because it started on a Monday, so both extra days were weekdays. 2028 starts on a Saturday, so its two extra days are Saturday and Sunday, and it ends up with only 260 weekdays, one fewer than the ordinary years around it.

Days excluding weekends and holidays in 2026

Most US employers close on some or all of the 11 federal holidays. In 2026 every one of them is observed on a weekday, so subtracting them from 261 weekdays gives 250 working days.

| Federal holiday | Date observed in 2026 | | --- | --- | | New Year's Day | Thursday, January 1 | | Martin Luther King Jr. Day | Monday, January 19 | | Washington's Birthday (Presidents' Day) | Monday, February 16 | | Memorial Day | Monday, May 25 | | Juneteenth | Friday, June 19 | | Independence Day | Friday, July 3 (July 4 is a Saturday) | | Labor Day | Monday, September 7 | | Columbus Day | Monday, October 12 | | Veterans Day | Wednesday, November 11 | | Thanksgiving Day | Thursday, November 26 | | Christmas Day | Friday, December 25 |

A few points to keep in mind:

• When a federal holiday falls on a Saturday, federal offices observe it on the preceding Friday. When it falls on a Sunday, they observe it on the following Monday. That is why July 4, 2026 is observed on July 3.
• Private companies are not required to follow the federal schedule. Many close on only six to ten of these days, and some add the day after Thanksgiving or Christmas Eve. Check your own company calendar before relying on 250.
• Inauguration Day is a holiday only for federal employees in the Washington, DC area, and only every four years. It does not apply in 2026.
• Some federal courts and agencies publish their own extended schedules that include extra days, such as the Friday after Thanksgiving or Christmas Eve. Those are agency-specific and are not part of the standard 11.

Weekdays in each month of 2026

If you are planning by month rather than by year, here is the breakdown for 2026 before holidays are removed. For a version that also subtracts holidays month by month, see our business days in a month tables.

| Month | Weekdays | | --- | --- | | January | 22 | | February | 20 | | March | 22 | | April | 22 | | May | 21 | | June | 22 | | July | 23 | | August | 21 | | September | 22 | | October | 22 | | November | 21 | | December | 23 |

Every month has between 20 and 23 weekdays. February is always the lowest in a non-leap year because it has exactly four weeks.

How to calculate it yourself for any date range

The general formula is:

Working days = total calendar days - weekend days - holidays that fall on a weekday

To count weekend days without a calendar in front of you:

1. Divide the total number of days by 7 to get the number of full weeks. Each full week contributes 2 weekend days.
2. Look at the leftover days (0 to 6 of them). Starting from the day of the week your range begins on, count how many of those leftovers land on a Saturday or Sunday.
3. Add the two figures together.

Example: January 1 to March 31, 2026 is 90 days. That is 12 full weeks (24 weekend days) plus 6 leftover days. The range starts on a Thursday, so the six leftover days are Thursday through Tuesday, which include one Saturday and one Sunday. Total weekend days: 26. Weekdays: 90 - 26 = 64. If you need the exact day count between two arbitrary dates without doing this by hand, WeekLeft's weeks between dates calculator does the arithmetic for you.

Using a spreadsheet

Excel and Google Sheets both have a NETWORKDAYS function that does this automatically:

=NETWORKDAYS("2026-01-01","2026-12-31")

This returns 261. To exclude holidays, list them in a range of cells and pass that range as the third argument:

=NETWORKDAYS("2026-01-01","2026-12-31",A1:A11)

If your weekend is not Saturday and Sunday, use NETWORKDAYS.INTL, which lets you specify which days count as the weekend.

What about a six-day work week?

If your business runs Monday through Saturday, the year has roughly 52 x 6 = 312 working days before holidays, give or take one or two depending on which days the year starts and ends on. Subtracting 11 federal holidays brings that to around 301. Retail, hospitality, and many small businesses fall into this category.

Why the number matters

The count of days excluding weekends is the basis for several everyday calculations:

• Hourly and salary conversions. Payroll systems often assume 260 or 261 working days a year (2,080 or 2,088 hours at 8 hours a day) when converting between annual salary and hourly rate.
• Project timelines. A 30-business-day deliverable due from a Thursday in September does not land 30 calendar days later. It lands about six weeks out, later still if a holiday sits in the middle.
• Paid time off. If you get 15 days of PTO and your company observes 10 holidays, your actual in-office days in 2026 are closer to 236 than 261.
• Legal and contract deadlines. Many contracts and court rules count "business days," which usually means weekdays that are not public holidays. A five-business-day window that starts before a long weekend can stretch to nine calendar days.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many days are in a year excluding weekends? 260 or 261 in a normal year. It is 261 whenever January 1 falls on a weekday, which is the case in 2025, 2026, 2027, and 2029. Leap years range from 260 to 262.

How many working days are in 2026? 261 weekdays. After removing the 11 US federal holidays, 250.

How many weekend days are in a year? 104 in a normal year (52 Saturdays and 52 Sundays). A year that starts on a Saturday or Sunday has 105, and a leap year that starts on a Saturday, like 2028, has 106.

Does a leap year always have more working days? No. It has one more calendar day, but whether that day is a weekday depends on the year. 2028 is a leap year with only 260 weekdays because it begins on a Saturday and ends on a Sunday.

How many working hours are in a year? At 8 hours a day, 261 weekdays is 2,088 hours. Many employers standardize on 2,080 hours (260 days) for salary calculations regardless of the actual calendar.

Are federal holidays the same as bank holidays in the US? Mostly. Banks and the stock market follow schedules that overlap heavily with the federal list, but they are not identical. The stock market, for example, closes on Good Friday, which is not a federal holiday, and stays open on Columbus Day and Veterans Day.