It’s important to say right away that suggesting people coincide their annual leave with bank holidays to maximise their time away from work is not exactly akin to cracking the Enigma code and doesn’t actually give anyone more time off than they otherwise might have.
But strategic leave-taking does allow people to take bigger blocks of holidays while using the fewest amount of days owed and that is – psychologically – a good thing once the time off is used wisely and not frittered away on boring household chores.
The first bank holiday of the year ahead falls on Monday, February 2nd – thanks, Brigid – so someone who takes four days’ leave from February 3rd gets a nine-day stretch from Saturday, January 31st, to Sunday, February 8th.
But what to do? We had a look on the Click&Go Holidays website where we found eight nights in a three-star aparthotel in Lanzarote for as little as €587 per person, a price which includes flights and accommodation. The cheapest four-star hotel on the volcanic island was coming in at €733 per person for half board.
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It is likely the weather in the Canaries will be much better than here in the weeks ahead, with travellers reasonably able to expect around seven hours of sunshine daily and temperatures of around 20 degrees – which is not a bad summer’s day in Ireland.
The next bank holiday to plan for is Paddy’s Day, which falls on a Tuesday.
Taking three days’ leave from March 18th gives someone a six-day stretch.
At the time of writing, a return flight with Aer Lingus to Rome – where the weather is expected to be a perfectly pleasant 18 degrees or so – was €179 per person.
Now the middle of March is not exactly peak season in the Eternal City, so we were able to find dozens of Airbnbs for five nights from the Tuesday to the Sunday for around €500. That would take the cost of a trip for two to just over €850 and, weather apart, the middle of March is a fine time to travel to Rome, with the city as free of maddening tourists as it ever gets.
Easter is early this year, which means our strategic holiday planner will have barely touched down in Dublin Airport after their Roman holiday before they have to pack again.
Easter Sunday falls on April 6th, which is the first Sunday after the first full moon of the spring equinox. Now a two-week holiday this early in the year might not suit everyone, but, for those keen to maximise their time off, it has to be done.
Good Friday, which falls on April 3rd, is not actually a public holiday, but is still a day when many offices and businesses close, so if we assume you happen to work for one of those operations then taking eight days’ leave from Saturday, March 28th, will give you a block of time off that lasts until Monday, April 13th – a stretch of 16 days.
There are plenty of destinations in southern Europe – including Seville and Cádiz in Spain, Sicily in Italy and the resorts of Greece and Turkey – where the weather will be pleasant, while it is also lovely in the Canaries, but if you want a real sun holiday then somewhere like Bali might be the best option, although it is not exactly cheap.
Sunway has 14 nights in a range of four-star resorts on the Indonesian island for about €2,100 per person. The price covers accommodation and return flights.
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The average daytime temperature in Bali in April is 28 degrees while only one day of rain throughout the entire month is what forecasters tell us we can expect.
So far we’ve taken 15 days of leave and have had three decent blocks of holidays lasting 31 days.
We’ll stay at home for the May bank holiday – which falls on May 4th, so you can insert your own Star Wars reference here – and then, for the June one at the very start of the month, we will take another four days’ annual leave from the 2nd.
That gives us another block of nine days from May 30th to Sunday, June 7th.
The weather in Ireland is pleasant in early June – thanks to the Leaving Cert – so you could consider a staycation for this stretch, cutting down on your carbon footprint and saving yourself a few bob on flights and accommodation too.
By the August bank holiday, which this year falls on the 3rd, you might want to consider another trip away.
It’s high season for tourism, with schools on holidays across Europe, so you’ll struggle to get a deal in France, Portugal, Spain or Italy.
But the southern coast of England is around 40km from the northern coast of France and can work out a whole lot cheaper both to get to and to stay in.
Brighton is a bit of a hidden gem when it comes to sun holidays and we have first-hand evidence of this. We found a range of one-bed Airbnbs in the city from between €800 and €1,000 for nine nights between July 31st and August 9th.
Gatwick Airport is just 40 minutes away with direct trains running to and from Brighton departing every 30 minutes or so, which makes it the most attractive airport to fly in to.
Return flights were coming in at around €300, which means two people could get a nine-day break in the city for around €1,400.
At this stage of the year, a person following this guide will have taken 23 days’ leave and had a total of 49 days off in five distinct blocks.
If we assume the reader has 25 days’ annual leave – more than some but less than some others – they still have two days to play with.
We will skip the October bank holiday and focus on Christmas 2026 instead.
This year Christmas Day falls on a Friday, so obviously St Stephen’s Day – also a public holiday – falls on a Saturday.
According to the Citizens Information website, if a public holiday falls on a day which is not a normal working day for that business then “you are still entitled to benefit for that public holiday. However, you do not have any automatic legal entitlement to have the next working day off work”.
As an employee, the rights you have are a paid day off on the public holiday, an additional day of annual leave, an additional day’s pay or a paid day off within a month of the public holiday.
For the sake of this article we will assume you get the Monday off and we will assume you don’t work for Ebenezer Scrooge before he had his dreams and also have Christmas Eve off.
So, by taking your last two days of annual leave for 2026 on December 29th and 30th (and making another assumption that you won’t have to work on New Year’s Eve) you could handily get yourself a stretch of time off from the evening of December 23rd until the morning of Monday, January 4th, 2027, which gives you 60 days off in six blocks at the cost of 25 days’ annual leave.
