Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2026 has already happened. It was Monday, 19 January 2026, 221 days ago. 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 Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2027, and for the always-current countdown see the next Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2026 is Monday, 19 January 2026
Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2026 fell on Monday, 19 January 2026, which was 221 days before 28 August 2026. That is 31 weeks and 4 days, or 154 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 2026-01-19 in ISO form and 1/19/2026 in the US format, it falls in ISO week 4 of 2026, and it is day 19 of 365.
How the date of Martin Luther King Jr. Day is decided
The third Monday in January, so it falls between 15 and 21 January. It has been a federal holiday since 1986.
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 19 January.
Martin Luther King Jr. 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.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the years after 2026
| Year | Date | Day | Countdown |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2027 | 18 January 2027 | Monday | Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2027 |
| 2028 | 17 January 2028 | Monday | Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2028 |
| 2029 | 15 January 2029 | Monday | Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2029 |
The weekday never changes; only the date does, inside the January 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 154 working days above.