What the International Bank Holiday Finder does
This works out when a payment can actually settle. Pick a market, a payment date and a number of settlement days, and you get the value date with the whole run of days in between - which were weekends, which were closures, and what each closure was called. Compare two markets and it shows the days both are open, which is what a cross-border payment needs.
The calendars come from their operators: GOV.UK's machine-readable bank holiday list for England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, the Federal Reserve Board's published schedule for Fedwire, and the European Central Bank's closing-day rule for TARGET (T2). There are five of them, and that is on purpose - a wrong holiday produces a wrong value date, which is worse than no answer. Every calendar is editable, and anything you add is labelled as yours.
Everything is computed in your browser, and the page is explicit that a calendar tells you when a system is open, not whether your payment will arrive.
How to use it
- Choose the market whose calendar governs the payment - for a euro payment that is TARGET, not the sender's or the receiver's country.
- Enter the payment date and the number of settlement days your scheme uses. T+0 means the same day if the market is open, otherwise the next open day.
- Read the day-by-day table. Each closed day says whether it was a weekend or a named closure.
- Add a second market to see the days both are open. For a cross-border payment, a day either end is shut is a day nothing moves.
- Add your own closures - a local holiday, a company shutdown - as
YYYY-MM-DD Name. They are marked as yours wherever they appear. - Export the run as CSV, or download the year's closures as an ICS file for your calendar.
Reading the results
The value date is when the money is credited with value, not when it leaves. A payment sent on a Friday afternoon with a T+2 value date is not late on the Tuesday; it was always going to be Tuesday.
T2's closing days are the same everywhere in the euro area: 1 January, Good Friday, Easter Monday, 1 May, 25 and 26 December. National holidays do not close T2 - euro payments settle on 3 October even though German banks are shut - so use T2 for the value date and the national calendar for whether anyone is at their desk to fix a problem.
The Federal Reserve list is Fedwire's. When a listed holiday falls on a Saturday the Reserve Banks are open on the preceding Friday even though the Board is closed, which is why 4 July 2026 appears with no weekday substitute.
Scotland and England diverge more than people expect: 2 January and St Andrew's Day are Scottish, the late August holiday is English, and the summer holiday falls a month apart. A UK payment can have two different answers depending on which list applies.
Worked example: the same payment, two settlement systems, Christmas 2026
Start on Thursday 24 December 2026 with T+2. In England and Wales, the 25th is Christmas Day, the 26th and 27th are the weekend, and the 28th is the Boxing Day substitute. The first settlement day is Tuesday the 29th and the second is Wednesday the 30th, so the value date is 30 December - six calendar days after the payment.
The same payment under TARGET settles a day earlier. T2 closes on 25 and 26 December, but the 26th is a Saturday in 2026 anyway and T2 does not observe the UK's Boxing Day substitute, so Monday the 28th is the first settlement day and Tuesday the 29th is the second. The value date is 29 December.
One day's difference over one week, from nothing but which calendar applies. Over a quarter-end or a payroll run it is the difference between paying on time and not, which is why the tool shows the whole run of days rather than just the answer.
Formulas and scoring rules
- Value date
roll the payment date forward to the next open day, then count n open daysT+0 rolls forward but adds nothing, so a payment on a closed day is never dated before the market reopens.- Open day
not a weekend day for that market, and not in its closure listWeekends are Saturday and Sunday for all five bundled calendars.- Both open
day is open in calendar A and open in calendar BUsed for the cross-border comparison; it is not itself a settlement rule.
Which calendar actually governs a payment
It is the currency's settlement system, not the countries of the parties. A euro payment between a Spanish and an Irish company settles on the T2 calendar even though both national calendars differ from it. A US dollar payment settles on the Federal Reserve calendar wherever the parties are. A sterling payment settles on the UK calendar, and on which UK calendar depends on the scheme.
The national calendars still matter, just for a different question. If something goes wrong with a payment on a day the receiving bank's staff are on holiday, the money may have settled but nobody will investigate until the next working day. That is why the comparison view is worth using even when only one calendar decides the value date.
Why only five calendars
A worldwide holiday list is easy to assemble and hard to keep right. National holidays move - Islamic calendar dates shift each year, several countries announce substitute days only weeks ahead, and India's bank holidays differ by state. A list that is wrong in one place produces a confidently wrong value date, and nothing about the output looks different when it is wrong.
So this page ships the calendars whose operators publish them properly and lets you add the rest yourself. Your additions are stored nowhere and are marked as yours in every table, so a colleague reading a printed result can see which dates came from the Federal Reserve and which came from you.
Limitations: what the result does not prove
- Five calendars only: three UK lists, the Federal Reserve and TARGET. Other markets must be entered by hand, and the page says so rather than implying worldwide coverage.
- A calendar says when a settlement system is open. It does not know your bank's cut-off time, a correspondent bank's own closures, or whether a compliance check will hold the payment.
- Dates are accurate as at the review date shown. Governments add and move bank holidays, sometimes at short notice, and a royal or national event can create one with weeks of warning.
- Anything you add is your own information, not an operator's. It is labelled as yours, and it stays in your browser.
- Nothing here confirms that a payment was sent, received or credited.
Privacy: where your data goes
Everything you paste, type or drop is processed in this browser tab. It is not uploaded, logged, stored or sent to analytics. Session recording and tag-manager scripts are switched off on this page.
Standards and sources
- ISO 8601 - Date and time representation - checked 19 Sep 2026
- GOV.UK - UK bank holidays (machine-readable)
- Federal Reserve Board - Federal Reserve Bank holiday schedule
- European Central Bank - TARGET Services (T2)
Frequently asked questions
What is a value date?
The date on which a payment is credited with value - when interest starts, when the funds are usable. It is not the date the payment was instructed, and for anything other than an instant scheme the two are normally different.
What does T+2 mean in payments?
Two settlement days after the trade or payment date. The count skips weekends and the settlement system's closing days, so T+2 across a bank holiday weekend can be four or five calendar days.
Which bank holidays close TARGET (T2)?
Six, the same every year across the whole euro area: 1 January, Good Friday, Easter Monday, 1 May, 25 December and 26 December, plus Saturdays and Sundays. National holidays do not close T2 - euro payments settle on a German or French national holiday as normal.
Does the receiving country's bank holiday delay my payment?
It does not change the value date, which is set by the currency's settlement system, but it does change who is available. If the payment needs manual handling - a repair, a compliance query, a returned item - nothing happens until the receiving bank is back at work.
Why do England and Scotland have different bank holidays?
They are set separately. Scotland keeps 2 January and St Andrew's Day and takes its summer holiday in early August; England and Wales take the late August one and Easter Monday, which Scotland does not. A UK payment can therefore have two different answers, and the page carries both lists.
Are Federal Reserve holidays the same as US federal holidays?
Nearly, with one wrinkle that matters. When a listed holiday falls on a Saturday, the Reserve Banks stay open on the preceding Friday even though the Board of Governors closes, so there is no weekday substitute for settlement purposes. The calendar records the actual dates and notes it.
Can I add my own country's holidays?
Yes - enter them as YYYY-MM-DD Name, one per line, and they are used in every calculation and marked as yours in the tables. They stay in your browser and are not sent anywhere. That is the honest way to cover a market whose official list this page does not bundle.
Why does this tool not cover every country?
Because a wrong holiday is worse than a missing one. National holidays move, substitute days are announced late, and some countries' bank holidays vary by state or by lunar calendar. Five operator-published calendars plus your own additions is a smaller claim that is actually true.
Last reviewed by the A2Z.Tools team against the sources listed above.
