The calendar of public holidays for 2026 has been approved. What you need to know

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has approved a decree defining the order of holidays and days off for 2026. According to him, the New Year's weekend will last 12 days. When is it better to take a vacation and whether it is worth waiting for a reduction in working days — in the Izvestia article.

How Russians are vacationing in 2026

• The first weekend of January 2026 coincides with Saturday and Sunday (3rd and 4th). Since these dates belong to the holidays, it was decided to postpone them: one day of rest was shifted to January 9 (Friday), and the other to December 31 (Thursday).

• As a result, Russians will rest:

• from December 31, 2025 to January 11, 2026 inclusive – 12 days;
• February 21-23 – three days;
• March 7-9 – three days;
• two May periods: from the 1st to the 3rd and from the 9th to the 11th — three days each;
• June 12-14 – three days;
• November 4th;
• December, 31st.

When is it more profitable to take a vacation

• The most rational way is to plan your vacation so that official holidays and weekends help to increase the length of your vacation without having to take too many extra days. In Russia, this opportunity appears almost every season.

• However, there are actually two main approaches to vacation planning, and the choice depends on what is more important — the length of the vacation or the amount of payments. If the goal is to increase vacation payments, then it is optimal to take vacations in those months where there are more working days and fewer official holidays. In this case, the cost of each vacation day is calculated based on the larger number of working days per month, which means that the payment is higher. To increase the payment even more, many people prefer to take days off on vacation, because they are included in the total rest period, but do not reduce the number of paid vacation days.

• If the priority is to stay away from work longer, then it's worth using the holiday periods. With proper allocation of vacation days between public holidays, you can get an impressive rest period, spending a relatively small part of the required vacation. For example, in January, May, or June, it's enough to add a few vacation days to the official holidays to free up two weeks or even more. However, this strategy has a financial feature: in months with a large number of holidays or shortened working days, vacation pay is lower, since the calculation is based on fewer working days. It is also worth remembering that such options are available to employees who work a standard five-day workweek and have the opportunity to divide their vacation into parts.

• In 2026, July is considered the most profitable month for taking a vacation, as it has 23 working days, and each day of rest in terms of payment will be the most valuable. Slightly fewer working days are provided in April, September, October and December — 22 each, so these months can also be considered among the most profitable for obtaining larger vacation pay.

• January is at the other pole: due to the large number of holidays, there are only 15 working days left in this month, which is why each vacation day will cost the most. The situation is slightly better in February and May, where there are 19 working days each. However, in these periods, payments will also be less profitable compared to months with a full workload.

Summer Prize: Teachers complain about refusals to grant them full vacations

The school management fears that it will be necessary to recover the funds paid for the rest if the teacher does not work for a year.

Prospects for a four-day week

• After the lifting of pandemic restrictions, many companies did not return exclusively to the traditional employment format and retained remote or combined (hybrid) work patterns. Some employers have even revised their usual schedule: for some organizations, the week now consists not of five working days, but of four, and in some cases of three. Such a transition is achieved through the competent allocation of resources, the use of digital tools and increasing the level of self-organization of employees.

• Practice shows that with a reduction in the number of working days, labor productivity does not decrease, and in some cases even improves. Organizations are seeing an increase in revenue as the cost of renting office space and equipping workplaces is decreasing. Employees themselves also benefit: daily travel time is reduced, stress levels are reduced, and it becomes possible to allocate their time more flexibly and pay attention to personal matters or recreation.

• In Russia, the transition to a four-day work week is possible in the future, but we are not talking about the coming years and widespread implementation. However, this format is not applicable to all areas of employment: there are professions with hourly or piecework pay, as well as industries where the work process cannot be interrupted, such as medicine or continuing support services.

• Changes are likely to occur gradually and will affect only those economic areas where it is possible to reduce the number of working days without compromising productivity. For such employees, it will be possible to spend less time at work, while maintaining the same income, and for the employer to build new social and labor relations on a mutually beneficial basis.

• In different countries, the idea of a shorter working week is increasingly being addressed, as the employment structure itself is changing and the demands on the quality of life of employees are increasing. The main motive for such experiments is the desire to find a balance between a person's personal time and the effectiveness of his work. Companies and government agencies analyze how reducing the number of working days affects the productivity and psychological state of employees, as well as the economic performance of the business.

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Travelers are actively interested in Tanzania, Kenya, Qatar, Oman and Mauritius.

• The four-day work schedule has not yet become widespread, but it is being actively tried to be implemented and tested in practice in different countries. In particular, these countries include Belgium, Germany, Iceland, Spain, Kazakhstan, Japan and the United Kingdom. At the same time, Belgium was the first in Europe to legislate the possibility of switching to a shortened week. Iceland, together with the UK, have implemented large-scale pilot projects that have demonstrated positive results. The Netherlands, Denmark, Portugal, and Poland are conducting their own research on this model, recording improvements in performance indicators and a reduction in occupational stress among employees.

When writing the material, Izvestia talked and took into account the opinions of:

● Anastasia Panova, Head of the HR and Payroll Department at the Tutu travel service.