St Patricks Day 2027

What is St Patrick’s Day?

St Patrick’s Day 2027 is Wednesday 17 March 2027. It falls on 17 March every year.

St Patrick’s Day is the feast day of Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, and Ireland’s national day. It is always 17 March, the traditional date of Patrick’s death, so it never moves. It is a public holiday in the Republic of Ireland and a bank holiday in Northern Ireland, but a normal working day in England, Scotland and Wales. The biggest civic celebration is St Patrick’s Festival in Dublin, run with the Government of Ireland, Fáilte Ireland and Dublin City Council. In Britain the big parades are run by the Mayor of London and by Irish associations in Birmingham and Manchester, usually on the Sunday before 17 March.

St Patrick’s Day began as a religious feast and is still marked with church services, but for most people it is a celebration of Irish identity and culture: parades, traditional music and dance, Irish food and drink, wearing green and a sprig of shamrock, the three-leaved plant Patrick is said to have used to explain the Holy Trinity. Because 17 March falls inside Lent, the day has long been treated as a break from the fast. It is celebrated wherever Irish people have settled, not least in Britain. Tourism Ireland’s Global Greening, which began in 2010, lights landmarks around the world in green for the day; in 2025 they included the Kelpies in Scotland and the Empire State Building.

Who was St Patrick?

Patrick was a Briton, not an Irishman. In his own short Latin memoir, the Confessio, he says his father Calpornius was a deacon and his grandfather Potitus a priest, and that the family lived at a place he calls Bannavem Taburniae, somewhere in Roman Britain. At about sixteen he was captured by raiders and taken to Ireland as a slave; six years later he escaped, made his way home, trained as a cleric and returned to Ireland as a bishop and missionary. The Confessio and his Letter to Coroticus are the only writings we have from Patrick himself; the Royal Irish Academy publishes both at confessio.ie. The Church of England calendar lists him as “Patrick, Bishop, Missionary, Patron of Ireland, c.460”, the usual estimate for the year of his death.

The famous stories are later additions: the tale that Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland is medieval (Ireland has never had native snakes), and the shamrock legend was first written down long after his death. The first recorded parade was held in New York in 1762, and the day became a public holiday in Ireland under the Bank Holiday (Ireland) Act 1903.

Is St Patrick’s Day a bank holiday?

Northern Ireland: yes. St Patrick’s Day is one of Northern Ireland’s ten bank holidays (England and Wales have eight). The nidirect bank holidays page explains the rules and links to the official list, which shows St Patrick’s Day on Tuesday 17 March 2026 and Wednesday 17 March 2027. When 17 March falls on a Saturday or Sunday, as it next does in 2029, the bank holiday moves to a substitute day, normally the following Monday. Schools, banks and government offices are closed, though many shops open.

Republic of Ireland: yes. St Patrick’s Day is one of the Republic’s ten public holidays under the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997. The Workplace Relations Commission notes that when it falls on a weekend employees keep their entitlement (a paid day off within a month, an extra day’s leave or an extra day’s pay), but there is no automatic right to the next working day off.

England, Scotland and Wales: no. St Patrick’s Day is not a bank holiday in the rest of the UK, so schools, offices and banks open as normal. That is why the British parades are held on the nearest Sunday rather than on 17 March itself.

St Patrick’s Day parades and events in the UK

London. The capital’s celebration is the Mayor of London’s St Patrick’s Festival, held on the Sunday before 17 March. In 2026 it took place on Sunday 15 March: the parade left Hyde Park at noon, passed along Piccadilly, Regent Street St James’s and Cockspur Street, and finished at Whitehall, with a free stage and food programme in Trafalgar Square from 12pm to 6pm. Irish county associations, marching bands, dancers and carnival performers take part behind a Grand Marshal (in 2026, the writer Emma Dabiri). The 2027 date has not yet been announced; it is normally confirmed early in the new year.

Birmingham. The Birmingham St Patrick’s Parade on Digbeth High Street dates back to 1952 and was the first of its kind in Britain. It is organised by Birmingham Irish Association, a registered charity. The parade did not run in 2025 or 2026; the association held a family fun day instead and Digbeth’s Irish pubs ran their own events through March. Check the parade website for 2027 before travelling.

Manchester. The Manchester Irish Festival is a programme of more than 200 events organised by the Irish World Heritage Centre in Cheetham Hill. Its St Patrick’s Day Parade, now more than 35 years old, took place on Sunday 15 March 2026, leaving the centre at noon and following Cheetham Hill Road and Deansgate into the city centre, while an Irish Festival Village in St Ann’s Square ran from 12 to 17 March with live music, food and drink. The 2027 date is normally published on the festival site early in the year.

Smaller parades take place in Liverpool, Leeds, Glasgow and Coventry, while Belfast parades on 17 March itself.

St Patrick’s Day in Ireland

In Dublin the day sits at the centre of St Patrick’s Festival, a multi-day programme of parades, concerts, street theatre and family events; the festival has confirmed its 2027 dates as 13 to 17 March 2027. Every town of any size in Ireland holds its own parade, often led by the local GAA club and schools, and Irish ministers and embassies host St Patrick’s Day events around the world in the same week.

How to take part

At school. Learn Patrick’s story from his own Confessio, map Ireland’s 32 counties and four provinces, try a few words of Irish, run a céilí dance session in PE, or bake soda bread, which needs no yeast. Northern Ireland schools are closed on the day itself, so they mark it in the days before.

At work. A bake sale, a lunchtime playlist of traditional music or a team outing to the Sunday parade are easy wins. If you have staff in Northern Ireland or the Republic, 17 March is a non-working day for them.

At home. Cook an Irish stew, colcannon or boxty (corned beef and cabbage is Irish-American rather than Irish), find a session of live Irish music in a local pub, or go to one of the Sunday parades above.

Related days

• St David’s Day on 1 March, the patron saint of Wales
• St George’s Day on 23 April, the patron saint of England
• St Andrew’s Day on 30 November, the patron saint of Scotland
• Irish-American Heritage Month, which runs through March in the United States
• Easter Monday, the next bank holiday across the whole UK after St Patrick’s Day; in 2027 it is 29 March