Israel public holidays
Israel's official days of rest for calendar year 2026. The nine statutory rest days are the Jewish festivals listed in section 18A of the Law and Administration Ordinance, 5708-1948 (two days of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, the first and eighth days of Sukkot, the first and seventh days of Passover, Shavuot) plus Independence Day under the Independence Day Law, 5709-1949. Every one of these is fixed by the HEBREW lunisolar calendar, so the Gregorian dates move by roughly two to three weeks from year to year and this list must be regenerated annually.
| Current value | 9 days held |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2026-01-01 |
| In force until | 2026-12-31 |
| Official source | Bank of Israel, Payment and Settlement Systems Department — 'מערכת זה"ב (ZAHAV RTGS) – ימי פעילות לשנת 2026', the official Gregorian dating of each 2026 Israeli holiday and holiday eve for the national payment system; cross-checked against the Civil Service Commission circular 26/2025 'ימי מועד, ימי בחירה וימי עבודה מקוצרים לשנת 2026' (published 11.11.2025, updated 08.06.2026), which is the government's own statement of which 2026 dates are days off |
| Last verified | 2026-07-24 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
HEBREW CALENDAR DRIVES THESE DATES — 2026 spans the end of Hebrew year 5786 (Passover through the summer) and the start of 5787 (from Rosh Hashanah on 12 September 2026). Every date above was read from the Bank of Israel's official 2026 RTGS activity calendar, not computed. Weekday check for 2026: Passover 1st day Thursday, Passover 7th day Wednesday, Independence Day Wednesday, Shavuot Friday, Rosh Hashanah Saturday and Sunday, Yom Kippur Monday, Sukkot 1st day Saturday, Simchat Torah Saturday. Four of the nine therefore fall on Shabbat or Friday in 2026 and are not compensated with a substitute weekday. WORKING WEEK: the Israeli business week runs SUNDAY TO THURSDAY; Friday is a short day or non-working day and Saturday (Shabbat) is the statutory weekly rest day under the Hours of Work and Rest Law, 5711-1951. Do not apply a Monday–Friday business-day model to Israel. DAYS THAT ARE NOT STATUTORY REST DAYS BUT DO CLOSE MARKETS AND BANKS in 2026: Purim, observed in Tel Aviv on Tuesday 3 March 2026 (Shushan Purim in Jerusalem falls the following day); Tisha B'Av, Thursday 23 July 2026; and the eve of Yom Kippur, Sunday 20 September 2026 — the Bank of Israel's ZAHAV system is closed on all three. Memorial Day for the Fallen (יום הזיכרון), Tuesday 21 April 2026, is a shortened working day, not a rest day, and immediately precedes Independence Day. SHORTENED WORKING DAYS in 2026 (ZAHAV closes 14:00): 1 April (eve of Passover), 7 April (eve of the seventh day), 21 April, 21 May (eve of Shavuot), 11 September (eve of Rosh Hashanah), 25 September (eve of Sukkot), 2 October (Hoshana Rabbah). ACCESS NOTE: the Civil Service Commission circular is a PDF under gov.il/BlobFolder and is Cloudflare-blocked to non-browser clients (HTTP 403); the Bank of Israel spreadsheet at the URL above is directly fetchable and is the better machine-readable watch target. NON-JEWISH HOLIDAYS: Muslim, Christian and Druze employees are entitled under Israeli labour law to their own communities' festivals as days of rest in place of the Jewish ones; those calendars are not enumerated here.
Get it programmatically
curl https://asiaref.dev/v1/il/public-holidays
# Free.
# History: curl https://asiaref.dev/v1/il/public-holidays/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://asiaref.dev/provenance/il/public-holidaysOther Israel series: policy interest rate · VAT rate · minimum wage · inflation rate (CPI) · corporate tax rate · income tax rates