Good Friday 2027

What is open on Good Friday?

In practice Good Friday looks more like a Saturday than a Christmas Day.

• Shops: There are no legal trading restrictions on Good Friday. Under the Sunday trading rules, large shops in England and Wales must close on Easter Sunday, not Good Friday, and Scotland has no trading-hours restrictions at all. Supermarkets usually open with slightly reduced hours.
• Banks and Post Office: Closed, as on any bank holiday. Online banking and cash machines work as normal.
• Schools: Usually inside the two-week Easter break, though term dates are set locally and do not always line up with a very early or late Easter.
• GP surgeries: Most are closed; NHS 111 runs as usual and some pharmacies open for part of the day.
• Transport: Trains and buses usually run a weekend timetable, and engineering work is common over Easter. Check before travelling.
• Pubs, restaurants and attractions: Open, and often busy. Many councils also move bin collections by a day.

How to take part

For families, a Walk of Witness is an easy and welcoming way to see the day marked, and most last under an hour. Baking hot cross buns, reading the Easter story or having a meat-free meal are gentle ways to explain what the day means.

For schools, Good Friday usually falls in the holidays, so the teaching happens in the weeks before. The run-up to Holy Week is a good time to look at Shrove Tuesday, Lent and the links between Easter and Passover.

For workplaces, confirm who is working on the bank holiday, remember that Scottish and English colleagues may have different days off on Easter Monday, and be aware that some staff will want to attend an afternoon service.

How the date of Good Friday is set

Good Friday is always two days before Easter Sunday, so its date depends entirely on the Easter rule. In the Western churches, Easter Sunday is the first Sunday after the first full moon that falls on or after 21 March. The Royal Observatory Greenwich explains that the equinox used is a fixed 21 March and the full moon is a calculated church moon rather than the one in the sky, which is why the date can be worked out centuries ahead.

Easter Sunday can fall anywhere from 22 March to 25 April, so Good Friday can fall anywhere from 20 March to 23 April. The dates below are taken from the Church of England’s Table of Moveable Feasts and the UK government’s bank holiday list.

Is Good Friday a bank holiday?

Yes. Good Friday is a bank holiday across the whole of the UK, one of the few that all four nations share. Easter Monday is different, and the official gov.uk bank holiday list is the place to check each year.

• England and Wales: Good Friday and Easter Monday are both bank holidays.
• Scotland: Good Friday is a bank holiday. Easter Monday is not, although some employers and councils give it as a local holiday.
• Northern Ireland: Good Friday and Easter Monday are both bank holidays.

Because it always falls on a Friday there is never a substitute day. Bank holidays give no automatic right to time off or extra pay; that depends on your contract.

How Good Friday is marked in the UK

Church services are the heart of the day. Many Church of England parishes hold a Three Hours’ Devotion from noon to 3pm, a sequence of readings, hymns, prayers and reflections on the last words of Jesus from the cross. Others keep a shorter liturgy in the afternoon, often with the Passion read from St John’s Gospel and the veneration of a wooden cross. Catholic churches hold the Celebration of the Lord’s Passion in the afternoon, and Catholics are asked to fast and to abstain from meat.

Outside the church walls, the most visible tradition is the Walk of Witness: congregations from different denominations walk together through the town centre carrying a large cross, stopping for readings and hymns. Open-air Passion plays are staged in a number of towns, and some churches keep the Stations of the Cross, a walk around scenes from the arrest to the burial of Jesus. At home the day is quieter: hot cross buns at breakfast and fish rather than meat at dinner are the two customs that have outlasted religious observance.

A short history

Christians have kept the Friday before Easter as a day of mourning since the early centuries of the church, with the reading of the Passion and the veneration of the cross at its centre. The Council of Nicaea in AD 325 asked all churches to keep Easter on the same Sunday rather than follow the Jewish Passover date directly, and the rule used today descends from that decision. In England the day was kept as a strict fast through the Middle Ages, and the Book of Common Prayer of 1662 gives it its own collects and readings. The hot cross bun, a spiced bun marked with a cross, has been its food since at least the eighteenth century.

Related days

• Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Day) marks the start of Lent, 47 days before Easter Sunday.
• Passover often falls in the same week, as the Last Supper is described as a Passover meal.
• Easter Sunday and Easter Monday complete the long weekend.
• National Hot Cross Buns Day celebrates the bun that has become the day’s signature food.