Christmas Day 2026

What Christmas Day is

Christmas Day 2026 is Friday 25 December 2026. It falls on 25 December every year.

Christmas Day is a bank holiday in all four nations of the UK, and in 2026 it lands on a Friday, so most people get a long weekend without needing a substitute day. The date never moves: 25 December is the day the Christian church marks the birth of Jesus, and for the UK it is also the biggest family day of the year. This page covers the bank holiday arrangements set out on gov.uk, what is open and closed, the traditions most British households keep, and when to catch the King’s Christmas broadcast.

For Christians, Christmas Day celebrates the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. The Church of England describes it as the feast of God coming to live among humanity, and it is the start of a season rather than a single day: the twelve days of Christmas run to the feast of the Epiphany on 6 January, when the visit of the Wise Men is remembered. The four weeks before it are Advent, a time of preparation.

Christmas Day as a UK bank holiday

Christmas Day is a bank holiday in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. When it falls at the weekend, a substitute weekday is given instead, and gov.uk publishes the dates each year. The next few years look like this:

• 2026: Christmas Day is Friday 25 December. Boxing Day is Saturday 26 December, so its substitute bank holiday is Monday 28 December 2026.
• 2027: Christmas Day is a Saturday and Boxing Day a Sunday, so the bank holidays move to Monday 27 December and Tuesday 28 December 2027.
• 2028: Christmas Day is a Monday and Boxing Day a Tuesday, with no substitute days needed.

There is no automatic right to paid leave on a bank holiday; whether you get the day off depends on your contract, and many people in retail, hospitality, transport and the NHS work through the festive period.

What is open on Christmas Day

Christmas Day is the quietest day of the British year:

• Shops: in England and Wales, large shops (over 280 square metres) must close on Christmas Day under the trading hours law explained on gov.uk. Smaller shops may open, and some corner shops and petrol stations do. Scotland has no trading hours restrictions in law, but almost all shops close anyway.
• Trains: there are no National Rail services on Christmas Day, and most operators run nothing on Boxing Day either. The National Rail Christmas and New Year 2026/27 summary covers the whole period from 24 December to 4 January, including engineering works.
• Health: GP practices are closed on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day. NHS England advises using NHS 111 online or by phone if you need urgent advice, and some pharmacies open for limited hours. Call 999 in an emergency as normal.
• Pubs and restaurants: many pubs open for a few hours at lunchtime and some restaurants serve a booked Christmas lunch, but most close early.

A short history

The church settled on 25 December as the date of the Nativity in the fourth century, and it has been kept as a feast day in Britain ever since, apart from a short-lived Puritan ban in the 1640s and 1650s. Most of what we think of as a traditional British Christmas is Victorian: Prince Albert’s tree at Windsor was pictured in the press in 1848, the first commercial Christmas cards and crackers appeared in the 1840s, and Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol in 1843. The 1932 royal radio broadcast and, later, television completed the modern Christmas Day.

UK Christmas Day traditions

Every family does it slightly differently, but the shape of the day is remarkably consistent:

• Stockings and presents first thing, often before breakfast.
• Church: Midnight Communion late on Christmas Eve or a family service on Christmas morning, with carols and a Christingle for the children.
• Christmas dinner in the early afternoon: roast turkey, pigs in blankets, roast potatoes, sprouts and gravy, then Christmas pudding, with crackers, paper hats and bad jokes pulled before the meal.
• The King’s broadcast at 3pm, which many families still sit down for.
• The afternoon: a walk, board games, the Christmas television schedule and the tin of chocolates.
• Christmas morning swims on beaches and in lakes around the coast, usually raising money for charity.

The King’s Christmas broadcast

The monarch’s Christmas message is the fixed point of the afternoon. According to the Royal Family’s history of the broadcast, King George V gave the first one by radio in 1932, with words written by Rudyard Kipling. It went out at 3pm because that was the best time to reach most of the Empire by short wave, and 3pm has been the slot ever since. Queen Elizabeth II made the first televised broadcast in 1957, and King Charles III gave his first in December 2022. It is shown on the main UK channels and published online by the Royal Family afterwards.

Related dates

• Advent begins four Sundays before Christmas.
• Christmas Jumper Day, the Save the Children fundraiser in December.
• Christmas Morning Swim Day, for the brave.
• Boxing Day on 26 December, the second festive bank holiday.
• New Year’s Day on 1 January, the last bank holiday of the season.