Payroll calendar 2026: when are the remaining paydays?

The 2026 dates that move paydays

Two calendars matter for pay. The first is the list of legal public holidays in 5 U.S.C. 6103: eleven days, five on a fixed date and six on a given weekday of a month. The second is the bank calendar, because a direct deposit settles only on a day the Federal Reserve Banks process payments. Their holiday schedule follows the same eleven days with one difference: when a holiday falls on a Saturday, the banks open on the Friday before. In 2026 that happens once, for Independence Day.

For payroll the right-hand column is the one that counts: those are the weekdays when no direct deposit can settle. A paper check can still be handed out on a bank holiday, but most employees are paid by deposit, and the employer has to send the payroll file to its bank a business day or two ahead of the payday, so the payroll office works to the same calendar.

Biweekly 2026, payday by payday

The table lists the second Friday series of the year, the one that starts on Friday, January 9, 2026. Every date is a Friday except where a holiday moved it, and each payday closes a two-week pay period that ends the Saturday before, six days earlier. Use the generator at the top for your own first payday and pay period delay.

Only one payday moves in this series, because the other ten holidays fall on days with no payday. The first series, from January 2, meets Juneteenth on Friday, June 19, 2026 and New Year’s Day 2027, which is why it ends the year with an extra check.

Semi-monthly and monthly pay in 2026

Pay on fixed days of the month meets weekends far more often than holidays. With paydays on the 15th and the last day, 8 of the 24 dates of 2026 fall on a Saturday or a Sunday, and the usual policy moves them to the Friday before. A monthly payroll on the last day of the month moves 4 times. The frequency menu of the generator switches to these schedules, and the semi-monthly page covers the choice of days in detail.

A schedule on the 1st and the 15th meets more holidays than one on the 15th and the last day, because New Year’s Day sits on the 1st. Whatever days you choose, the calendar counts 24 paydays a year for twice-monthly pay and 12 for monthly pay; only the weekly and biweekly schedules can gain a payday in a year.

When the money arrives

The payday is the date your employer settles the payment, and banks usually make a direct deposit available that day. When a payday is moved to the business day before a holiday, the deposit simply arrives earlier. When it is moved after, it arrives later, and the overtime rule of 29 CFR 778.106 still expects overtime pay on the regular payday or as soon as practicable after it. The mini tool below shows, for any holiday of 2026 and either rule, the date a payday due on the holiday is actually paid.

For the rest of the year at a glance, the direct deposit holidays page lists the bank closures of 2026 and 2027, and the pay periods 2026 page counts what each schedule pays in the year.