School holiday dates by country — the calendar that drives family travel, and the single biggest determinant of peak-season pricing.
Long weekends & bridge days
Term breaks and public holidays overlap more than parents expect. These are the dates that turn into family time without burning leave.
2026 holidays around the world
Every public holiday we track in 2026, country by country — the skeleton that school terms are built around.
Christmas travel 2026
The single most expensive week of the family-travel year. Here’s when to book and where to go.
Why school holidays are the hard part
Public holidays are national and published in one place. School holidays are not. Term dates are set regionally, sometimes by state and sometimes by individual school district, which means there is no single authoritative calendar to publish — only a patchwork of them.
We are building this section country by country, working from the official term dates published by each education authority, and flagging where regional variation matters.
What it means for booking
School holidays set the price of family travel. The week a region breaks up is the most expensive week to fly out of it, and the effect is visible three to four months ahead. If your dates are fixed by term time, the useful thing is to know how far in advance to book — not whether to go.
Not published yet
We would rather leave this section thin than publish term dates we cannot verify. If you need a specific country prioritised, tell us.