Columbus Day 2026 is still ahead. It falls on Monday, 12 October 2026, 45 days after 28 August 2026. This page is kept whichever side of today the date falls on: the date and the rule behind it are worth looking up either way. For the year after this one see Columbus Day 2027, and for every year we have a page for see all holiday countdowns.
Columbus Day 2026 is Monday, 12 October 2026
There are 45 days between 28 August 2026 and Columbus Day, which falls on Monday, 12 October 2026. That is 6 weeks and 3 days, or 29 working days once Saturdays, Sundays and the US federal holidays in between are taken out — the figure that matters if you are counting delivery lead time or a work schedule rather than sleeps. The date is 2026-10-12 in ISO form and 10/12/2026 in the US format, it falls in ISO week 42 of 2026, and it is day 285 of 365.
How the date of Columbus Day is decided
The second Monday in October, between 8 and 14 October. Several states observe Indigenous Peoples' Day on the same date instead, and many private employers do not close at all.
That makes it a floating date: it is pinned to a weekday rather than to a day number, so it is always a Monday but the date moves. In 2026 that is 12 October.
Columbus Day is one of the eleven US federal holidays. Federal offices, banks and the bond market close, and it does not count as a business day in any of the business-day calculators on this site. Because the rule always puts it on a Monday, it can never land at a weekend, so it never needs an observed-date shift. The observed date is the one our business days calculator skips.
Columbus Day in the years after 2026
| Year | Date | Day | Countdown |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2027 | 11 October 2027 | Monday | Columbus Day 2027 |
| 2028 | 9 October 2028 | Monday | Columbus Day 2028 |
| 2029 | 8 October 2029 | Monday | Columbus Day 2029 |
The weekday never changes; only the date does, inside the October window the rule allows.
Every convention used above — whether the start date counts, how month ends are clamped, which holidays close an office — is written out on the methodology page, including how we count the 29 working days above.