Australia Long Weekends 2026 and 2027: Every Public Holiday, State by State

It depends where you work, which is the whole point of the planner above. Across the country: Fri 25 September 2026, Friday before the AFL Grand Final in Victoria, Mon 28 September 2026, King's Birthday in Western Australia, Mon 5 October 2026, King's Birthday in Queensland and Labour Day in New South Wales, South Australia and the ACT, Thu 22 October 2026, Royal Hobart Show in Tasmania, Mon 2 November 2026, Recreation Day in Tasmania and Tue 3 November 2026, Melbourne Cup in Victoria. Only Christmas Day and the days around it are national.

Yes, in a way an American reader would not. Section 115 of the Fair Work Act 2009 counts a day declared under a state or territory law as a public holiday, and section 114 gives you the right to be absent on it. That is a real entitlement covering essentially the whole private sector, not a convention. Two caveats: an employer can ask you to work if the request is reasonable, and some of these days are regional rather than statewide.

Because each state sets its own list. Victoria takes the Friday before the AFL Grand Final, Fri 25 September 2026. Western Australia puts the King’s Birthday on the Monday, Mon 28 September 2026. Neither NSW nor Queensland has anything that weekend, and both then get Mon 5 October 2026, which Victoria and WA do not. The planner prices the same trip on the same dates for all four so you can see what the difference actually costs.

Victoria, with 19 between now and the end of 2027, and the Northern Territory has the fewest at 17. The gap is smaller than it looks: most of the difference is one or two state-only days such as Melbourne Cup, Canberra Day or Picnic Day, not a systematically better deal.

That also varies, and it is the single most common thing these lists get wrong. Boxing Day 2026 is a Saturday, and most places add Mon 28 December 2026 as an extra day, while Tasmania simply observes Boxing Day on that Monday instead of adding to it. Anzac Day 2027 falls on a Sunday, and there New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and the ACT add or move to the Monday while Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania do not: the day is commemorated on 25 April wherever you are, but only some of you get a day back for it.

Christmas Day 2026 is a Friday, Boxing Day falls on the Saturday so the Monday is added, and New Year’s Day is the Friday after. Book the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in between and the block runs 25 December 2026 to 3 January 2027, which is 10 consecutive days for three leave days. That holds in every state and territory, so it is the one window on this page where the toggle changes the price and not the calendar.

In Queensland, South Australia and the Northern Territory it is, but only from the evening: 6pm in Queensland and 7pm in the other two. It is a part-day holiday, which means penalty rates for anyone working those hours and nothing at all in terms of a day off. This page marks those days on the calendar strip and never counts them as free. Everywhere else, 24 December is an ordinary working day.

From Sydney and Melbourne there is a nonstop to India; from Brisbane and Perth there is not, and this page prices the connection on the Christmas window so you can see what it costs rather than guess. Manila and Ho Chi Minh City have a nonstop from all four capitals, though not every capital had a nonstop seat left across this particular Christmas block, so some rows below price a connection. Mumbai, Chennai, Cebu and Kathmandu have no nonstop from any of them. Perth is the outlier worth knowing about: it reaches Bali in about 3h40 and Jakarta in 4h25, against 6h30 and 7h50 from Sydney.

Not yet set. The date follows the AFL fixture and is gazetted each year, so the Fair Work Ombudsman still lists the 2027 one as subject to the AFL schedule. It is normally the last Friday in September or the first in October. The 2026 date, Fri 25 September 2026, is confirmed.

Mostly because of how far away it is, not because the window is better value. These fares were all read on one day, 27 August 2026. Late September was about four weeks out at that point and Australia Day was five months out, and a short-haul fare four weeks from departure is close to its peak. Gold Coast from Melbourne, for instance, is AUD 375 return over the September weekend and AUD 166 over Australia Day. Treat every number here as a snapshot of one morning, and expect the January figures to rise as the date gets closer rather than the September ones to fall.

Usually because it is an unbundled fare, where the headline price buys the seat and nothing else. AirAsia, Batik Air, Cebu Pacific, Indonesia AirAsia, Jetstar Airways, Scoot, TransNusa and VietJet Air are the cheapest option on 64 of the 96 priced routes here. On those fares a checked bag, a larger carry-on, seat selection and any change are charged separately, and the real total can land above a full-service fare that looked dearer. Wego does not publish a baggage allowance, so check the airline’s own baggage page before treating two of these numbers as comparable.