Pay periods
How many pay periods are there in 2026?
Pick the year and your payday: the counter gives the number of biweekly paydays for both series of that weekday.
How many biweekly paydays in a year?
Every other Friday in 2026
26 paydays
| Series starting Friday, January 2 | 26 paydays, last Friday, December 18 |
| Series starting Friday, January 9 | 26 paydays, last Friday, December 25 |
Dates as scheduled, before any holiday move. Weekly pay gives 52 Fridays in 2026.
Year 2026 has 52 scheduled weekly paydays for most weekdays and 53 for a Thursday payday, because the year starts and ends on a Thursday and holds 53 Thursdays against 52 Fridays. A biweekly payroll has 26 pay periods in 2026 whatever its weekday, with one exception on the calendar: a Thursday series that starts on Thursday, January 1, 2026 has 27 dates, the first of them New Year’s Day. There is a second exception that comes from the holidays rather than the calendar. A Friday series paid on January 2 has its 27th date on Friday, January 1, 2027; banks are closed, and a payroll that pays the business day before puts it on Thursday, December 31, 2026. Counted by the date the money arrives, which is what a W-2 counts, that schedule pays 27 times in 2026. Semi-monthly pay gives 24 periods and monthly pay 12, every year. The counter above checks any weekday and year.
Paydays in 2026
27first Friday, January 2, last Thursday, December 31
2 paydays moved for a weekend or holiday. 26 are scheduled in the year; the rule moves 1 across New Year.
January
- Fri 2
- Fri 16
- Fri 30
February
- Fri 13
- Fri 27
March
- Fri 13
- Fri 27
April
- Fri 10
- Fri 24
May
- Fri 8
- Fri 22
June
- Fri 5
- Thu 18moved from Jun 19
July
- Fri 3
- Fri 17
- Fri 31
August
- Fri 14
- Fri 28
September
- Fri 11
- Fri 25
October
- Fri 9
- Fri 23
November
- Fri 6
- Fri 20
December
- Fri 4
- Fri 18
- Thu 31moved from Jan 1
Everything you enter stays in this browser: nothing is sent or stored. The .ics file opens in any calendar app.
Holiday rules and pay calendars read by Radif Partners · Editorial policy · Method
The count for each frequency
The table gives the standard number of periods in a year, the divisor most payrolls use to split a salary, and the number of paydays a typical Friday or fixed-date schedule actually has in 2026, after moving dates off weekends and bank holidays.
| Frequency | Standard periods | Paydays in 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly | 52 | 53 |
| Biweekly (every 2 weeks) | 26 | 26 |
| Semi-monthly (twice a month) | 24 | 24 |
| Monthly | 12 | 12 |
The weekly row counts 53 paydays for a Friday payroll, although 2026 has 52 Fridays. Christmas Day, Friday, December 25, 2026, is paid a day early and stays in the year; the extra one is Friday, January 1, 2027, New Year’s Day, paid on Thursday, December 31 when the payroll pays the business day before. A Thursday weekly payroll meets 53 Thursdays, the first being New Year’s Day 2026, so its count depends on the holiday rule in the same way.
Why the count changes from year to year
A year is 52 weeks and one day, two in a leap year. Every weekday therefore occurs 52 times, and the weekday of January 1 occurs 53 times; in a leap year the weekday of January 2 does too. A weekly payroll on that weekday gets a 53rd payday. A biweekly payroll covers two weeks per period, so it needs the extra day to fall exactly on one of its paydays: for 2026 that is a Thursday series beginning on New Year’s Day, the only weekday series with 27 dates that year.
Holidays can shift a payday across the year boundary, which adds or removes one. Moving a payday from January 1 to December 31 gives the old year an extra check and the new year one fewer. Under 5 U.S.C. 6103, January 1 is always a holiday, and the Federal Reserve Banks close on it whenever it falls on a weekday. That is why the year boundary is where pay counts get interesting, and why this site counts paydays by the date they are paid.
Federal employees in 2026
Federal pay periods are counted by leave year, not by calendar year. Leave year 2026 runs from Sunday, January 11, 2026 to Saturday, January 9, 2027, as the OPM table of leave years shows, and holds 26 biweekly pay periods. The next leave year with 27 periods is not in the published table, which runs to 2030; the last one was 2023. The federal pay calendar 2026 dates each period.
Checking your own count
Your pay stub or payroll portal gives the date of your first payday of the year. Enter it in the calendar under the summary at the top of this page, which counts paydays by the date they are paid, the way they appear on your W-2. If your employer pays early when a payday falls on a holiday, keep the default rule; if it pays late, choose “Pay the next business day” and watch the New Year’s payday cross into the next year.
Next years with 27 biweekly paydays
Next 27-payday year, every other Friday
2027
| 2027 | if the first payday is Friday, January 1 |
| 2032 | if the first payday is Friday, January 2 |
| 2038 | if the first payday is Friday, January 1 |
| 2044 | if the first payday is Friday, January 1 |
Counted on scheduled dates. A holiday rule can push the first or last payday into the next or previous year.
The finder above lists the next years in which a biweekly series on your weekday has 27 scheduled dates. For the year after, the pay periods 2027 page shows the Friday series that gives 27 scheduled paydays, and the 27 pay periods page explains what an extra check does to a salary.