The occasion

Regional holiday

Statutory set by a subdivision with the competence to set it

A holiday in part of a country and not the rest — and the commonest source of a wrong date.


Often confused with local holiday public holiday

A regional holiday is declared by a subdivision rather than a national government: a German Land, a Spanish comunidad, a Swiss canton, a UK nation. Where the subdivision holds the competence, the national list is genuinely incomplete rather than merely summarised.

This is the single commonest way a date goes wrong in practice. Asking a holiday library for a country returns the national list, the answer looks complete, and it silently omits every regional day — which is why a payroll run for Bavaria or Scotland off a national calendar misses days every year.

The corpus holds 653 subdivisions for this reason, and asking for a country returns national rows only, deliberately. It refuses to guess which region you meant.

Three days that show it

Each of these is a public holiday in part of a country and an ordinary working day in the rest of it. None appears on the national list.

🇩🇪 Wednesday 6 January 2027Bavaria, Germany EpiphanyKept in three of the sixteen Länder. Not a German national holiday.
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Monday 4 January 2027Scotland 2 JanuaryScotland only. An ordinary working day in England.
🇨🇭 Saturday 2 January 2027Zurich, Switzerland Berchtold's DayCantonal. Switzerland has few national holidays and many cantonal ones.

Regional holiday vs local holiday

Regional means a subdivision with legislative competence. Local means a city or district, usually under a delegated power.

Regional holiday vs public holiday

Regional holidays are public holidays. The word records that the authority declaring them is not the national one.

See also local holiday · public holiday · jurisdiction · statutory holiday

Asking for a country returns national rows only. Ask for GB-SCT rather than GB if you need Scotland. See what we hold.