Bank holiday - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A bank holiday is the name used for a public holiday in both the United Kingdom, Ireland, and some other Commonwealth countries. The UK started using bank holidays in 1871.

List of bank holidays

The below is a list of such holidays in the United Kingdom and Ireland. An "X" underneath a country's name means that country uses that date as a bank holiday

**Current bank and public holidays**
Date	Name	England and Wales	Scotland	Northern Ireland	Republic of Ireland
		8	9	10	9
1 January	New Year's Day	X	X	X	X
2 January	2 January		X
17 March	St. Patrick's Day			X	X
The Friday before Easter Sunday	Good Friday	X	X	X
The day after Easter Sunday	Easter Monday	X		X	X
First Monday in May¹	Early May Bank Holiday (UK), Labour Day (Ireland)	X	X	X	X
Last Monday in May²	Spring Bank Holiday	X	X	X
First Monday In June	June Bank Holiday				X
12 July	Battle of the Boyne - Orangemen's Day			X
First Monday in August	Summer Bank Holiday		X		X
Last Monday in August	Summer Bank Holiday	X		X
Last Monday in October	October Bank Holiday				X
30 November	St. Andrew's Day		X
25 December	Christmas Day	X	X	X	X
26 December	Boxing Day, St. Stephen's Day	X	X	X	X

For one year only, 1995, this holiday was moved to the second Monday in May – i.e., from 1 May to 8 May – to commemorate the 50th anniversary of VE Day.
For one year only, 2002, this holiday was moved to 4 June. This caused it to follow an extra bank holiday on 3 June, making a four-day weekend to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Elizabeth II.

In other countries

India has 15 bank holidays

Hong Kong calls public holidays "bank holidays", even though they are not officially called that.