May — days, dates and countdowns

How to use May

Open the calendar and pick a year: the grid shows the whole month at once, with weekends shaded, so “what day of the week is May 15th” takes one glance rather than a search. Click any date to count the days to or from it, or jump straight to the holiday list to plan a long weekend around a day off.

May public holidays 2026

May is unusually generous with days off, and 2026 is no exception. The best-known dates: May 1 — International Workers’ Day (Labour Day), a public holiday in much of Europe, Latin America and Asia. In 2026 it lands on a Friday, which makes a natural three-day weekend.

May 4 — Early May bank holiday in the United Kingdom, held on the first Monday of the month. May 18 — Victoria Day in Canada, the Monday before May 25. May 25 — Memorial Day in the United States and the Spring bank holiday in the UK: both fall on the last Monday of May, and in 2026 that is the same date.

Holidays in May 2026 differ by country beyond this list — many nations add their own religious or national dates — so if travel depends on it, check the country’s official calendar as well. May is the only month that hands most of the northern hemisphere a paid day off in its very first week — and then does it again at the end.

What day of the week is May 1st — and the rest

Weekday questions about May cluster around a few dates, so here they are for 2026 in one place. May 1st falls on a Friday. May 4th is a Monday — which is exactly why the UK’s early bank holiday sits there. May 15th is a Friday. May 29th is also a Friday: in 2026 the 1st, 15th and 29th all share the same weekday, since they sit exactly two weeks apart. For any other year, the calendar above gives the answer instantly — weekdays shift by one or two positions each year, so an answer memorised for one year quietly goes stale the next.

The rest of the month

Between the bookends sit Cinco de Mayo on Tuesday the 5th and Mother's Day in the US on Sunday, May 10 — the second Sunday, so it moves each year. None of these stop the mail, but at least one of them will fill every restaurant in town, so the calendar is worth a glance even if your office ignores it.

A month that starts on a Friday, ends on a Sunday, and puts its holidays on Mondays is not a calendar accident — it is a lifestyle.

Name, season and the long evenings

May is generally taken to be named for Maia, a Roman goddess associated with growth. Whatever the etymology, the association fits the northern experience of the month: it is the point where evening daylight becomes genuinely long before the heat of high summer arrives, and it contains the longest stretch of pleasant working weather in many temperate places.

South of the equator the month reads entirely differently — late autumn, shortening days, the run-up to winter. As with January, the hemisphere gap is at its widest in the months furthest from the equinoxes, and May is close to that extreme.