Other divisions · Faith
Holiday Germany
How many public holidays you get depends on where you live: from 10 in seven states, among them Berlin and Hamburg, to 14 in Augsburg. Which days off you get follows the old confessional map. Reformation Day (31 October) is a holiday for 31% of Germans, in the former East and the north; the Catholic feast of Corpus Christi for 65%, in the south and west.
| Zone | Districts | People | Share | Area |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Catholic holidays Corpus Christi, and All Saints except in Hesse; no Reformation Day | 262 | 53.9 m | 64.6% | 183,941 km² |
| Reformation Day 31 October is a holiday; Corpus Christi is not (or only in a few villages) | 137 | 25.8 m | 30.9% | 171,814 km² |
| Both Reformation Day and Corpus Christi (Eichsfeld) | 1 | 0.1 m | 0.1% | 943 km² |
| Neither Berlin: no confessional holiday beyond the nationwide ones | 1 | 3.7 m | 4.4% | 891 km² |
Nine holidays apply everywhere, from New Year's Day to Boxing Day; 3 October is fixed by the Unification Treaty. Everything else is set by the 16 state laws. The 262 districts of Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland keep Corpus Christi, and all of them except Hesse also All Saints' Day (1 November). The 138 districts with Reformation Day are exactly the former East without Berlin (75 districts) and the four northern states of Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Bremen and Lower Saxony (63), whose current holiday lists date from 2018. Not one district elsewhere has it.
Within states the line runs through villages. In Bavaria, Assumption Day (15 August) is a holiday only where Catholics outnumbered Protestants at the last census: in 1,708 of 2,056 municipalities, so about 2.3 million Bavarians, 94% of them in Upper and Middle Franconia, have no day off. Augsburg alone also has its Peace Festival on 8 August, which makes it the district with the most holidays. In Saxony, Corpus Christi is a holiday only in a group of villages between Bautzen, Kamenz and Hoyerswerda in the Sorbian-speaking area; in Thuringia, in the Eichsfeld (64.2% Catholic at the 2022 census), the only district with both Corpus Christi and Reformation Day.
Some holidays are secular: Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern have International Women's Day (8 March), Thuringia World Children's Day (20 September). Saxony is the only state with Repentance Day (Buß- und Bettag), a Wednesday in November. On average people in the former East (without Berlin) get 10.8 holidays a year, in the former West 11.3: Brandenburg's 10 pull the eastern mean down. For tour guides: Berlin and Brandenburg have the fewest in the East, 10 each.
Does the line still show?
Today's figures on each side, as population-weighted averages of the district values (our calculation from the live themes on this site).
| Indicator | Catholic holidays | Reformation Day | Both | Neither |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AfD vote 2025 | 18.3% | 25.7% | 35.0% | 15.2% |
| Green vote 2025 | 12.4% | 9.8% | 3.1% | 16.8% |
| Unemployment 2025 | 5.8% | 6.8% | 4.4% | 10.3% |
| Gross monthly salary € 31.12.2025 | 4,310 | 3,840 | 3,272 | 4,459 |
| Young people 31.12.2025 | 13.5% | 12.2% | 9.5% | 15.1% |
| Childcare 1 March 2025 | 33.6% | 47.7% | 57.2% | 49.4% |
| Foreign population 31.12.2025 | 18.5% | 11.9% | 5.7% | 26.9% |
How we drew the line
We read the list of statutory public holidays in each of the 16 state holiday laws in force in November 2026 and counted the days that can fall on a working day (Brandenburg also lists Easter Sunday and Whit Sunday; Hesse declares all Sundays holidays; these are not counted, nor are one-off holidays). Each district takes its state's count. Where a holiday applies only in some municipalities, we added the share of the district's population (31 December 2025) living in those municipalities: Assumption Day in Bavaria (the State Office for Statistics' list of 1,708 municipalities, based on the Zensus 2022), the Augsburg Peace Festival, Corpus Christi in the Sorbian municipalities of Landkreis Bautzen (Saxon ordinance of 1993) and in the Thuringian Eichsfeld. A district is coloured by whether Reformation Day and Corpus Christi apply to most of its people; the value is the population-weighted number of public holidays a year.
- Saxony: the 1993 ordinance lists villages that are now often parts (Ortsteile) of larger municipalities, where the holiday applies only in that part. Without official population figures for Ortsteile we counted today's municipalities that consist mainly of listed places (about 7% of Landkreis Bautzen's population); this changes the district's value by less than a tenth of a day.
- Thuringia: the law keeps Corpus Christi where it was observed in 1994, without an official list of places. We count the whole Landkreis Eichsfeld, as the district office does; a few Eichsfeld-area villages in Unstrut-Hainich-Kreis and Wartburgkreis that also observe it are not counted.
- Bavaria: Assumption Day follows the census of 15 May 2022 and can change after the next census. In municipalities without the holiday it remains a protected religious day, but not a day off.
- The count includes holidays that fall on a weekend in a given year (e.g. Women's Day or 1 November on a Saturday), so actual days off vary from year to year. Berlin has a one-off extra holiday on 17 June 2028, not counted here.
- Comparisons show association: the Catholic-holiday zone is entirely in the former West, and the Reformation Day zone covers the former East and the north.