Biweekly pay schedule 2027: which Fridays are paydays?

The two Friday series of 2027

A biweekly payroll pays every 14 days, so in a year of 52 weeks and one day it lands on 26 dates, or 27 when its first payday is the first day of the year. In 2027 the extra day is a Friday, which is why only the Friday series that starts on Friday, January 1, 2027 reaches 27 scheduled dates. The other one, which starts on Friday, January 8, 2027, keeps 26. The table below is that second series, with the dates as paid when a bank holiday gets in the way.

No payday of this series moves in 2027 under the bank calendar. The two federal holidays that fall on Fridays, Juneteenth observed on Friday, June 18 and Christmas observed on Friday, December 24, are days when federal offices close but banks stay open, because the holidays themselves fall on Saturdays. Choose “Federal holidays as observed” in the generator and those two paydays move to the Thursday before.

The series that starts on New Year’s Day

The first series has its first scheduled payday on Friday, January 1, 2027, a legal public holiday under 5 U.S.C. 6103, and its last on Friday, December 31, 2027. Its 27 dates are a calendar fact; how many of them are paid in 2027 depends on the payroll rule for holidays.

• Paid the business day before: the New Year’s payday is paid on Thursday, December 31, 2026, it belongs to 2026, and 2027 has 26 paydays.
• Paid the next business day: it is paid on Monday, January 4, 2027 and 2027 has 27 paydays.
• Federal holiday calendar: the last payday, Friday, December 31, 2027, is also a federal holiday, the day off for New Year’s Day 2028 listed by OPM; the banks are open, but a payroll that follows the federal calendar pays it on Thursday, December 30.

Those differences change the year’s W-2 wages, which count pay when it is received, but not the salary for the work done. The 27 pay periods page explains how employers handle the extra check and the pay periods 2027 page gives the count for every weekday.

Pay periods behind the paydays

Each biweekly payday pays a pay period of two workweeks. Under the federal overtime rules each workweek stands alone: overtime is counted week by week, never averaged over the two weeks, even when both are paid together. A common pattern, used in the table, is a Sunday to Saturday period paid on the Friday six days after it ends, which leaves a week for timesheets and the payroll run. Your employer’s delay may be shorter or longer; the generator takes any number of days from 0 to 20 and shows each period next to its payday when you print the schedule.

A biweekly schedule never needs to change from one year to the next: it just keeps stepping. That is why the same Friday series reads differently from year to year, with 26 paydays in most years and 27 in some, and why the 2028 calendar begins exactly two weeks after the last 2027 payday.