Lean calendars
Uruguay mandates just 5 paid holidays and Mexico 7, both with most dates on fixed days. If minimal disruption is the priority, these two markets are the simplest to plan around.
Free tool
Latin America public holidays 2026, by country
Every national holiday date in 2026 for eleven Latin America hiring markets, with US federal holiday overlap, so you know exactly which days your nearshore team is off and which ones need a coverage plan.
Built for founders and operators hiring offshore staff who want to plan availability across two calendars before the year surprises them.
- Free to use
- 2026 dates resolved
- No signup required
Holiday calendar
Check the 2026 public holidays by country
Pick a country to see its full 2026 national holiday list with exact dates, which holidays it shares with the US calendar, and how many days fall while your US office is open.
Public holidays 2026
See the 2026 holiday calendar by country
Pick a Latin America market to see every national holiday date in 2026, how the calendar lines up with US federal holidays, and which days you need a coverage plan for.
Only the seven federal days are mandatory paid holidays. Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and December 12 are widely taken in practice, and banks close for some of them, so confirm expectations with each hire even though the law does not require the day off.
Statutory paid holidays, fewest to most
- Uruguay 5 paid national holidays
- Mexico 7 paid national holidays (selected)
- Brazil 10 paid national holidays
- Guatemala 10 paid national holidays
- Costa Rica 11 paid national holidays
- Ecuador 11 paid national holidays
- Dominican Republic 12 paid national holidays
- Argentina 16 paid national holidays
- Chile 16 paid national holidays
- Peru 16 paid national holidays
- Colombia 18 paid national holidays
Mexico public holidays, 2026
7 paid days
- 7 of the 7 statutory paid holidays land on a weekday in 2026, plus 3 widely observed or local dates worth planning around.
- 2 paid holidays fall on the same date as a US federal holiday (January 1, December 25), so both sides are off together.
- 5 paid weekday holidays fall while US offices are open. These are the days to plan coverage for.
- 9 US federal holidays land on weekdays when Mexico is working, so your hire is available unless you extend your US calendar to them.
| Date | Day | Holiday | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| January 1 | Thursday | New Year's Day | Paid holiday |
| February 2 | Monday | Constitution Day (Fixed to the first Monday of February) | Paid holiday |
| March 16 | Monday | Benito Juárez's Birthday (Fixed to the third Monday of March) | Paid holiday |
| April 2 | Thursday | Maundy Thursday (Not a statutory holiday, but banks close and many employers give the day) | Observed |
| April 3 | Friday | Good Friday (Not a statutory holiday, but widely taken across the country) | Observed |
| May 1 | Friday | Labor Day | Paid holiday |
| September 16 | Wednesday | Independence Day | Paid holiday |
| November 16 | Monday | Revolution Day (Fixed to the third Monday of November) | Paid holiday |
| December 12 | Saturday | Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe (Not statutory; falls on a Saturday in 2026) | Observed |
| December 25 | Friday | Christmas Day | Paid holiday |
Why it matters
Two calendars, one team
The first holiday season with a nearshore hire catches many US teams off guard, in both directions. In November your hire in Bogotá takes a Monday off for a holiday you have never heard of, and three weeks later they are online during Thanksgiving wondering why nobody is answering. Neither moment is a problem. Both are the predictable result of running one team across two national calendars without lining those calendars up first.
The fix is mechanical, not cultural: know the dates. A hire in Mexico is off seven statutory days in 2026. A hire in Colombia is off eighteen, most of them Mondays. A hire in Montevideo has only five mandatory paid holidays, fewer than your US office. Each of those calendars overlaps the US federal list in a few places, diverges in others, and has a handful of weekday dates that need nothing more than a shared calendar entry and a handoff note the day before.
This page resolves every movable date for 2026, including Holy Week, Carnival, and the Monday-shifting rules Colombia, Ecuador, and the Dominican Republic apply by law, and compares each market against the eleven US federal holidays. Pair it with the PTO by country guide for statutory vacation on top of these dates, and the time zone overlap calculator for the daily rhythm between the holidays.
At a glance
Three kinds of holiday calendars
Monday-shifted calendars
Colombia and the Dominican Republic move most midweek holidays to Mondays by law. You get more holidays, but they arrive as predictable three-day weekends instead of broken weeks.
Dense but clustered
Argentina, Chile, and Peru run 16 or more days, concentrated in recognizable blocks: Holy Week, national weeks in July and September, and early December. Plan the blocks, not each date.
Reference table
Public holidays by country, 2026
Statutory paid national holidays across the Latin America markets LavaStaff covers, ranked from the fewest to the most, with the weekday impact and US overlap that actually drive planning.
| Country | Paid holidays | On weekdays | Shared with US | Solo days to cover |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Uruguay | 5 | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| Mexico | 7 | 7 | 2 | 5 |
| Brazil | 10 | 9 | 4 | 5 |
| Guatemala | 10 | 8 | 2 | 6 |
| Costa Rica | 11 | 7 | 2 | 5 |
| Ecuador | 11 | 11 | 4 | 7 |
| Dominican Republic | 12 | 11 | 2 | 9 |
| Argentina | 16 | 15 | 5 | 10 |
| Chile | 16 | 10 | 3 | 7 |
| Peru | 16 | 13 | 2 | 11 |
| Colombia | 18 | 18 | 3 | 15 |
Paid holidays are statutory paid non-working days for private employees in 2026, on their observed dates. Solo days are paid holidays landing Monday through Friday on dates that are normal US working days, which is where coverage planning actually happens. Argentina typically adds two or three bridge holidays by decree on top of the figure shown, and Brazil’s practical calendar adds Carnival and Corpus Christi, which are near-universal though not statutory. The regional average is about 12 paid holidays.
By the numbers
What the 2026 calendars show
5 days
Fewest paid holidays in this set (Uruguay)
18 days
Most paid holidays in this set (Colombia)
12 days
Regional average paid holidays in 2026
The overlap
Where the US and Latin America calendars meet in 2026
Every market in this set shares two dates with the US federal calendar: January 1 and December 25. Beyond those, 2026 produces some useful one-off alignments. October 12 is Columbus Day in the US and a national holiday in Colombia, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina, all on the same Monday. May 25 is Memorial Day and simultaneously Argentina’s May Revolution Day and Ecuador’s observed Battle of Pichincha. February 16 is Presidents Day and Carnival Monday in Argentina and Ecuador. September 7 is US Labor Day and Brazil’s Independence Day. Each shared date is a free day: both sides are off, nothing needs covering, and no goodwill is spent.
The divergences run in both directions and are just as predictable. Thanksgiving, Juneteenth, Veterans Day, MLK Day, and July 4 do not exist on any Latin American statutory calendar, so on those five to eight weekdays your hire is working while your US office is quiet, which some teams treat as focused heads-down time and others cover with an extended company calendar. Going the other way, every market has its own weekday holidays the US does not observe: Holy Week days across nearly the whole region in early April, Colombia’s Monday holidays through the year, the late-July Independence block in Peru, and the mid-September national days in Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Chile.
For reference, the eleven US federal holidays in 2026: New Year's Day (01/01), Martin Luther King Jr. Day (01/19), Washington's Birthday (Presidents Day) (02/16), Memorial Day (05/25), Juneteenth (06/19), Independence Day (observed) (07/03), Labor Day (09/07), Columbus Day (10/12), Veterans Day (11/11), Thanksgiving Day (11/26), Christmas Day (12/25).
How to plan
Turn the dates into a working policy
Mark the solo days at onboarding
The dates that need attention are local weekday holidays when your US office is open. Put them in the shared calendar on day one so nobody discovers a holiday the morning of.
Decide the US-holiday question in writing
Your hire is not off for Thanksgiving or July 4 unless you extend those days. Decide which US dates you grant, if any, and write it into the working agreement before the start date.
Use the overlap days for free
Shared dates like January 1, December 25, and 2026's October 12 alignment cost you nothing: both sides are off together. Anchor company-wide breaks to them when you can.
The default that works for most teams: your hire observes the statutory holidays of the country they live in, because that is what local law and local payroll assume, and you add whichever US dates matter to your business, most commonly Thanksgiving and the day after. This keeps the hire compliant and normal in their own market while sparing them from being the only person online during your company’s biggest holiday. The cost is modest: even generous versions of this policy add two or three days against a US calendar that already includes federal holidays your hire does not get locally.
The one policy to avoid is the unstated one. If holidays are never discussed, your hire will default to local law, you will default to your own calendar, and the first mismatch arrives as a surprise on a Monday morning. A single paragraph in the working agreement, which country’s calendar applies, which extra dates are granted, and how handoffs work the day before a solo holiday, removes the entire category of friction. If you hire through LavaStaff, holiday pay and premiums are already handled in local payroll, so the conversation is purely about scheduling, not compliance.
Methodology
How this calendar is built
The dates are each country’s national public holidays for 2026, resolved to their observed dates. Movable religious dates follow from Easter Sunday falling on April 5, 2026: Good Friday on April 3, Carnival Monday and Tuesday on February 16 and 17, and Corpus Christi on June 4. Where a country shifts holidays by law, the shifted date is shown: Colombia moves most holidays to Mondays under the Ley Emiliani, the Dominican Republic moves non-anchor holidays to Mondays under Law 139-97, and Ecuador moves weekend holidays to the nearest Friday or Monday. Mexico’s three Monday-fixed civic holidays are shown on their 2026 Mondays.
Each list separates statutory paid holidays from observed dates: days that are not mandatory paid holidays nationwide but are widely taken, such as Brazil’s Carnival and Corpus Christi, Mexico’s Holy Week, Costa Rica’s Day of the Cultures, Guatemala’s half days and its capital-only Assumption Day, and Uruguay’s common holidays, which most private offices work. Counting rules explain why different references quote different totals for the same country; this page counts only statutory paid days in its headline figures and lists everything else explicitly.
Treat the calendar as a planning baseline rather than legal advice. Governments add, move, and occasionally remove dates by decree inside the year, Argentina does so every year with bridge holidays, and states, provinces, and cities layer local holidays on top of the national lists shown here. Confirm the current official calendar for the specific market before you finalize a policy, or hire through a partner that tracks it for you as part of local payroll.
Questions
Latin America public holidays, answered
How many public holidays do Latin American countries have in 2026?
It varies widely by country. Across the eleven markets LavaStaff covers, statutory paid national holidays in 2026 range from five in Uruguay and seven in Mexico up to sixteen in Argentina, Chile, and Peru and eighteen in Colombia, with a regional average of about twelve. The practical number can differ from the legal one: Brazil adds Carnival and Corpus Christi, which are optional at the federal level but observed almost everywhere, while several of Chile's sixteen holidays land on weekends in 2026 and are simply absorbed. This page lists the exact dates for each market so you can plan against real days rather than a single count.
Which Latin American country has the most public holidays?
Colombia has the longest statutory calendar in this set, with eighteen paid national holidays in 2026, most of them moved to Mondays under the Ley Emiliani. Argentina is close behind with sixteen fixed holidays plus bridge holidays the government adds by decree, which usually pushes its practical total to eighteen or nineteen. Chile and Peru also have sixteen each. At the other end, Uruguay mandates only five paid non-working holidays, and Mexico only seven, which makes those two the leanest calendars in the region.
Do Latin America holidays overlap with US federal holidays?
Some do, and the overlap is worth knowing because those days cost you nothing in coverage. Every market in this set shares January 1 and December 25 with the US calendar. In 2026 there are also several one-off alignments: Colombia, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina all have a holiday on October 12, the same date as Columbus Day, Argentina and Ecuador are off on May 25, which is Memorial Day, and Argentina's and Ecuador's Carnival Monday falls on February 16, the same day as Presidents Day. Brazil's Independence Day lands on September 7, which is US Labor Day in 2026. The tool on this page counts the shared dates for each market automatically.
Is my nearshore hire off on US holidays like Thanksgiving?
Not by default. Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, Juneteenth, and the Fourth of July do not exist on any Latin American statutory calendar, so your hire is legally working those days. Most US companies handle this one of two ways: either the hire follows the US holiday calendar entirely, taking US days off and working through local ones with premium pay or swap days where local law allows, or the hire keeps local holidays and the company simply plans around them. Many teams land on a hybrid: local statutory holidays plus a few key US dates like Thanksgiving. Whatever you choose, write it into the working agreement before the start date so nobody is surprised in November.
Are public holidays paid days off in Latin America?
For statutory national holidays, yes. Labor codes across the region treat national holidays as paid non-working days, and employees who do work them are typically owed a premium, commonly double pay and in some countries more. The nuances sit at the edges: Uruguay only mandates pay for five of its holidays and treats the rest as ordinary working days, Costa Rica has one holiday without mandatory pay, and Brazil's Carnival is technically optional even though nearly everyone takes it. When you hire through a staffing partner or employer of record, holiday pay and premiums are handled in the local payroll, so the main thing you need from this page is the dates themselves.
How should I plan team coverage around Latin America holidays?
Start with the solo days: the paid weekday holidays in your hire's country that are normal working days in the US. Those are the only dates where coverage needs a plan, and there are between two and fifteen of them in 2026 depending on the market: just two in Uruguay and five in Mexico and Brazil, up to fifteen in Colombia. For a single hire, the simplest approach is a shared calendar with those dates marked at onboarding, plus a handoff note the day before each one. For a team in one country, stagger nothing and just plan around the dates, since the whole market is off together. For a team spread across two or three countries, the calendars rarely line up, which works in your favor: someone is almost always on. The dense stretches to watch in 2026 are Holy Week at the start of April, when most of the region takes at least two days, mid-September for Chile's Fiestas Patrias and Mexico's Independence Day, and the run of November dates in Brazil and Colombia.
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