Working Days Calculator Australia — 2026 and 2027 by State

Working days in Australia by state — 2026

For a standard Monday–Friday schedule, these totals remove full-day statewide public holidays only — not regional show days, local holidays, part-day holidays or sector-specific closures.

The NSW August Bank Holiday isn’t a declared public holiday across all NSW workplaces, so it’s not deducted from the statewide total. Queensland’s Ekka/show holidays, Tasmania’s regional holidays and other local dates can still change your actual roster without changing the statewide figure.

Working days in Australia by state — 2027

These 2027 totals use the currently published full-day statewide holiday calendars. Victoria’s Friday-before-the-AFL-Grand-Final holiday is still pending on the Victorian Government’s calendar, so 252 is the confirmed-date total shown here until that date is published.

Why the working-day count changes by state

Australia doesn’t run one public-holiday calendar. The Fair Work Ombudsman publishes separate 2026 and 2027 lists for every state and territory, and each jurisdiction can have its own substitution rules, regional holidays and capital-city-only holidays on top of that.

So a question like “how many working days are there in Australia in 2027?” genuinely has a different correct answer depending on whether the workplace is in NSW, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, the Northern Territory or the ACT.

A few state-specific quirks

• NSW: the August Bank Holiday isn’t a declared public holiday for every NSW workplace, so it’s left out of the statewide total.
• Queensland: the Royal Queensland Show holiday applies to the Brisbane area; other regions run their own show holidays.
• Victoria: Melbourne Cup Day is a statewide public holiday with some regional variation, and the AFL Grand Final holiday moves with the fixture.
• Tasmania: some holidays only apply to particular areas or groups — the Royal Hobart Regatta, Royal Hobart Show and Recreation Day among them.
• Northern Territory: Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve are part-day holidays (7 pm to midnight), so they’re not deducted as full working days here.
• South Australia: same part-day treatment for Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, 7 pm to midnight.
• Western Australia: some regional areas mark the King’s Birthday on a different date.
• ACT: Canberra Day, Reconciliation Day and the ACT’s own substitution arrangements all feed into the annual total.

Working days vs business days

In everyday use, working days and business days mean the same thing to most people: weekdays left over once the relevant public holidays are taken out. That’s the definition this calculator uses — Monday to Friday, minus the selected state’s full-day public holidays.

For a contract, enterprise agreement, award, court timetable or other formal deadline, check the wording in that document — it can define a working day differently to this general-purpose tool.

This tool uses Australian state and territory public holidays throughout. If you need federal US holidays instead, use our US Business Days Calculator.

How to calculate working days between two dates

1. Choose your state or territory.
2. Enter the start and end dates — 2026, 2027, or a range that crosses from one into the other.
3. Choose whether the start and end dates themselves should count.
4. Check the public-holiday list and untick anything your organisation doesn’t observe.
5. Add RDOs, shutdown days or local closures in the custom dates field if they apply to your roster.
6. Calculate, and read the working-day total.

The result also breaks out calendar days, weekends and the public holidays that actually removed a day, so you can check the number rather than just trust it.

How to add or subtract working days

Use Add Days to find a future date after a set number of working days, or Subtract Days to move backwards from a date. Either way, the start date itself isn’t counted as day one — the calculator moves to the next (or previous) calendar date first, then starts counting.

Adding 10 working days from a Friday, for instance, can cross one or more weekends and public holidays — and if it lands near New Year’s, it’ll cross from one calendar into the next automatically.

Who this calculator is for

• Project and operations teams: turning a calendar deadline into a working-day deadline using the right state’s calendar.
• Small businesses: working out operating days between two dates before committing to a job or delivery window.
• Admin teams: checking periods and schedules without manually scanning a calendar.
• Trades and construction: adding RDOs, shutdown dates or other roster exclusions when a plain Monday–Friday calendar isn’t enough.
• Anyone checking a deadline: how many working days are left, or how far a working-day deadline is from today.

Official Australian public-holiday sources

Holiday dates here are checked against Australian government sources. The Fair Work Ombudsman notes that each state and territory sets its own public holidays, and that some jurisdictions use substitute or additional days and regional arrangements.

Official calendars change from time to time — this page gets rechecked when a state publishes a changed or newly confirmed date. Victoria’s 2027 AFL Grand Final Friday is the current example of a date still in motion.

Frequently asked questions

Methodology

The calculator steps through the date range one day at a time. With the standard Monday–Friday setting on, Saturday and Sunday are skipped first. A date is then excluded if it matches a ticked full-day public holiday for the selected state or territory — using whichever year’s calendar that date actually falls in, so a range spanning 2026 and 2027 applies both years correctly. Custom non-working dates are applied last. A weekend public holiday doesn’t reduce the count twice; a separately declared additional or substitute weekday is counted as its own holiday date. Years outside 2026–2027 aren’t in our confirmed holiday data yet, so dates in those years only have weekends excluded — the result flags this if it happens.

For “Between Dates”, you control whether the start and end dates are included. For “Add Days” and “Subtract Days”, the start date isn’t counted as day one — the calculator moves to the next or previous calendar date and counts from there.