No votes yet

July — days, dates and countdowns

July 2026 has 31 days, begins on a Wednesday, and contains the most anticipated date on the american calendar this year: Saturday, July 4 — 250 years since 1776. The july calendar below lays out the weekdays and holidays.

Every day of July

July 2026 in numbers

A free day is a Saturday, a Sunday or a public holiday — one rule on every page of this site. Holidays shown for the United States; pick another country.

Holidays in July 2026

Holidays by country

40 of 250 countries · see them all

How to use July

Two questions dominate this month: what day the 4th of July falls on, and how the holiday interacts with the weekend. This page answers both for 2026 and keeps the rest of the month's dates alongside, so trip planning, closures and "is the 31st a weekday?" (it is — a Friday) get settled in one visit.

July calendar 2026: the shape of the month

Anchors for 2026: Canada Day — Wednesday, July 1 Independence Day (US) — Saturday, July 4 Bastille Day (France) — Tuesday, July 14 Month's end — Friday, July 31 With the 1st on a Wednesday, July 2026 splits into four full working weeks plus ragged edges on both ends. Every date ending in 4, 11, 18 or 25 is a Saturday.

What day of the week is July 4th 2026?

A Saturday — and not just any Fourth. July 4, 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the United States Semiquincentennial. When Independence Day lands on a Saturday, the federal day off is typically observed on Friday, July 3, so the practical effect for 2026 is a three-day weekend with the celebration itself on Saturday night.

July holidays and the quiet stretch

After Bastille Day on the 14th, the july holidays run dry: the back half of the month has no major public holiday in the US, Canada, or the UK. This is by design in vacation terms — late July is when the out-of-office replies take over. The days in July are long, the inboxes short, and the month quietly does more resting than any calendar admits.

The Fourth of July is the rare deadline everyone meets: the fireworks do not wait, and nobody asks for an extension.

Named for a person, unlike most of the year

July is named after Julius Caesar, and August after Augustus — the two months in the calendar named for individuals rather than gods or numbers. They sit next to each other and both have 31 days, which is the source of a persistent story that August was lengthened so as not to look lesser than July. It is a good story and repeated often; the historical evidence for it is not as solid as the retelling suggests, so it is better enjoyed than asserted.

What is plain is the result: two consecutive 31-day months in the middle of the year, breaking the alternating pattern the calendar otherwise almost keeps.

Questions and answers

How many days in July?
Thirty-one, every year. July and August are the year's only back-to-back long months.
What day of the week is July 1st, 2026?
A Wednesday — which in Canada plants Canada Day squarely midweek.
Why is July 4, 2026 a bigger deal than usual?
It is the 250th birthday of the Declaration of Independence, signed in 1776 — an anniversary the US has been preparing for under the name Semiquincentennial.
All pages