How Public Holidays Work in France

France recognises 11 public holidays (jours fériés) in its Code du travail, but the way they translate into paid days off is more nuanced than the headline number suggests. Only 1 May, Labour Day, is a statutory paid day off that every employer must grant. The other ten are ordinary public holidays whose treatment depends on the applicable collective agreement or company custom. In practice most employers close on all of them, but there is no automatic legal right to the day, and pay for it is only guaranteed for employees with at least three months of service.

A defining feature of the French calendar is that public holidays are not moved when they fall on a weekend. If 1 May or 14 July lands on a Saturday or Sunday, the day is simply lost, with no substitute granted unless a company agreement provides one. This makes the real number of days off vary noticeably from year to year, and it is why French employees pay close attention to years when several holidays fall midweek, opening the door to faire le pont (bridging) by taking the intervening working day off.

Regional differences add another layer. The départements of Alsace-Moselle keep two extra statutory holidays, Good Friday and 26 December (Saint Stephen's Day), a legacy of the region's history under German law. The overseas territories observe their own commemorations, including local abolition-of-slavery days that are not marked in mainland France.

For payroll, the key questions are whether the employee meets the three-month service condition, whether work performed on 1 May attracts the mandatory 100 percent premium, and whether a collective agreement upgrades the treatment of the remaining holidays. Because these rules interact with regional calendars, teams operating across several French sites cannot rely on a single national list.