Greece keeps around a dozen public holidays. Most are fixed to a date, and most of them close a bank and very little else you came for. Two of them are not fixed, and those two decide whether your trip works.
Greek Easter is calculated on a different calendar from the Western one, so it is usually not the Sunday your own country calls Easter, and in some years it lands five weeks away from it. The fortnight around 15 August is when Greeks themselves take their holidays, so the ferries and the island rooms fill with domestic travellers rather than with tourists.
Greece public holidays rest on Greek labour law, and when the state moves one it moves it by a ministerial decision published in the Government Gazette. The closures on this page come from the people who do the closing: the Hellenic Ministry of Culture for archaeological sites and state museums, and the Hellenic Bank Association for the banks.
So the useful question is never which days are holidays. It is what each one shuts, and the answer is a different answer for a bank, a museum and a taverna on an island in July.
Last checked: 13 July 2026
The holidays, and what each one actually closes
A date on its own is not information. A date with a closure attached to it is, and this is the table the calendar sites do not print.
| Date | What it is | Fixed or moves | What it closes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 January | New Year’s Day | Fixed | Banks, public offices. State archaeological sites and museums closed |
| 6 January | Epiphany, the blessing of the waters | Fixed | Banks, public offices. Not on the sites’ closed list, which is not the same as a promise |
| Clean Monday | The start of Orthodox Lent, 48 days before Easter Sunday | Moves with Easter | Banks, public offices, schools |
| 25 March | Independence Day and the Annunciation, with a military parade | Fixed | Banks, public offices. State archaeological sites and museums closed |
| Good Friday | The most solemn day of the Greek year | Moves with Easter | Banks. State sites and museums open 12:00 to 17:00 |
| Holy Saturday | Not a public holiday, but its hours are strange | Moves with Easter | State sites and museums open 08:30 to 15:30 |
| Orthodox Easter Sunday | The biggest day of the Greek year | Moves | Banks, public offices. State archaeological sites and museums closed |
| Easter Monday | An obligatory holiday in law | Moves with Easter | Banks, public offices. Sites and museums operate on their normal hours |
| 1 May | Labour Day, and the one the state can transfer | Fixed unless moved | Banks, public offices. State archaeological sites and museums closed |
| Monday of the Holy Spirit | Whit Monday, 50 days after Easter Sunday | Moves with Easter | Banks, public offices. Sites and museums operate on their normal hours |
| 15 August | The Dormition of the Theotokos | Fixed | Banks, public offices. Sites and museums operate. The boats fill |
| 28 October | Ohi Day, with parades | Fixed | Banks, public offices. Sites and museums operate, and admission is free |
| 25 December | Christmas Day | Fixed | Banks, public offices. State archaeological sites and museums closed |
| 26 December | The second day of Christmas | Fixed | Banks, public offices. State archaeological sites and museums closed |
Sources, and they are the reason to use this table rather than another one. The bank column is the Hellenic Bank Association’s own published calendar. The museum column is the Ministry of Culture’s annual decisions on the operating hours of state archaeological sites, monuments and museums, both of which are published in the Government Gazette: the winter decision closes them on 25 and 26 December, 1 January and 25 March, and the summer decision closes them on Orthodox Easter Sunday and 1 May, sets Good Friday at 12:00 to 17:00 and Holy Saturday at 08:30 to 15:30, and states that on Easter Monday, the Monday of the Holy Spirit, 15 August and 28 October the sites operate on their normal schedule.
Two structural rules explain the shape of the whole calendar, and visitors get both of them wrong.
Sunday is already a rest day in Greek law, so a public holiday that falls on a Sunday stays on the Sunday. There is no Monday off in lieu, and Greece does not owe you one. That is good news rather than bad: a holiday absorbed by a Sunday is a holiday that costs you no weekday at all.
And one honest sentence about the law, then we stop. Which moveable feasts are strictly obligatory for private employers is a question Article 60 of Law 4808/2021 answers and which sources argue about, particularly for Clean Monday, Good Friday and the Monday of the Holy Spirit. A traveller standing at a locked gate does not care. What a traveller needs is the closure, and the closure is published separately, by the people who do the closing. That is what the table above gives you, and how we check and date it is set out in full.
What shuts on an ordinary Greek afternoon is a completely different question with a completely different answer, and it lives on siesta and opening hours.
Greek Easter moves, and it is usually not the Easter you know
Greek Orthodox Easter is calculated on the Julian calendar, so it usually falls on a different Sunday from Western Easter and can be as much as five weeks later. It is the biggest holiday of the Greek year, and its date drags the closures, the ferries and the room prices along behind it.
Learn the rule rather than the date, because the rule is the part that keeps working. Both traditions use the same principle: Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox. The Orthodox Church applies that principle on the Julian calendar, which now runs thirteen days behind the Gregorian one, and it uses an older table for the full moon.
Thirteen days on their own would only ever produce a small gap. What produces the big one is the moon. In some years the Orthodox calculation reaches past the full moon the Western calculation used and catches the next one instead, and a whole lunar month drops in between the two Easters. That is why the gap is sometimes a week and sometimes over a month. When the two dates differ, the Greek one is the later one.
| Year | Western Easter | Greek Orthodox Easter | The gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 5 April | 12 April | One week |
| 2027 | 28 March | 2 May | Five weeks |
| 2028 | 16 April | 16 April | The same day |
| 2029 | 1 April | 8 April | One week |
| 2030 | 21 April | 28 April | One week |
Look at 2027 for a second, because it is the trap in its purest form. A traveller books the first week of April, comfortably after their own Easter, and arrives in Greece four weeks before Holy Week has even started. A traveller books the first week of May for the quiet, and lands in the middle of Pascha.
What that costs you, concretely. Holy Week is the busiest domestic travel week of the Greek spring, because Greeks go home for it. State archaeological sites and museums are shut on Easter Sunday and keep half days on Good Friday and Holy Saturday. Rooms and ferry seats are taken, and the demand taking them is Greek. If your window touches Holy Week you have two options, and both of them are fine: plan around it, or plan for it and book far earlier than you would otherwise .
So before you fix spring dates, look up the year’s Orthodox Easter, not your own. April in Greece is two different countries depending on which side of it you land on.
What Holy Week is actually like to be in the middle of, which is a genuinely good reason to go rather than a reason to avoid it, belongs on Greek Easter and mid-August . How the boats themselves work, when demand is not the issue, is on Greek island ferries.
The state can move a public holiday, and it has
Here is the fact that separates a sourced calendar from a copied one. A Greek public holiday is not a fixture. It is a published act, and an act can be amended.
The obligatory public holidays are codified in Article 60 of Law 4808/2021. The same law lets the Minister of Labour designate further holidays, up to five a year, by a decision published in the Government Gazette.
It is not theoretical. In 2024, 1 May fell on Holy Wednesday, so the May Day holiday was transferred to Tuesday 7 May by ministerial decision, published in the Government Gazette. The Hellenic Bank Association’s own calendar records the same manoeuvre in 2016, when May Day moved to 3 May.
This is the part worth carrying away from the page. In Greece, an administrative act that is not published is not in force, and an act of this kind is always published. So the authoritative answer to “is that really a holiday this year” is the published decision, in the Government Gazette or on the Diavgeia transparency register, and not a calendar website. Ours included, a year from now. We re-check this page and date it, and our editorial policy says exactly what that means.
The practical consequence is one sentence long. In the years when Greek Easter lands near the start of May, the calendar you printed out in January can be wrong by the time you fly.
Mid-August is when Greece goes on holiday, and it takes your seat
For a visitor, 15 August is not mainly a closure. It is a crowd.
The Dormition of the Theotokos is an obligatory national holiday and it sits at the exact centre of the Greek holiday season. In the days around it, the boats out of Piraeus and the rooms on the islands fill with Greek families going to their villages, their islands and their grandmothers. Greek news coverage carries the same story every year: a mass departure from Piraeus, extra sailings scheduled, ferries leaving full. That is the corroborated pattern, and it is all we are going to claim. No passenger count, no occupancy rate and no superlative dressed up as a statistic, because no primary source publishes one.
Three consequences, in the order of what they cost you.
Moving between islands. If you want to island-hop in the week before or the week after 15 August, book the crossing far earlier than you otherwise would. The competition for that seat is domestic, it books early, and it is not deterred by the price.
Sleeping somewhere. Island accommodation in that fortnight is scarce and priced accordingly. Turning up and finding a room is not a strategy in mid-August. What a Greek trip costs sets out where the money actually goes, and what to book ahead sets out how far ahead.
The mainland empties in the other direction. Athens in mid-August is quieter than Athens in July, and hotter. That is a real trade and some people take it deliberately.
Now the counterweight, because this is not a warning. The fortnight around 15 August is when the country is at its most alive. Every island has its panigiri, the villages fill up, and Tinos is the centre of a pilgrimage. If that is what you want, go, and book like a Greek. If what you want is an empty beach, this is the worst fortnight of the year to look for one, and the shoulder season is where you will find it instead.
What those two weeks are actually like, from the inside, is on Greek Easter and mid-August .
What stays open, and what genuinely shuts
Greece does not shut down on a public holiday, and it does not carry on as though nothing has happened either. The rule that reconciles those two is simple: institutions close, and trade, in a tourist town in season, is having one of its better days.
What closes, and who says so. Banks and public offices, on every holiday in the table above, per the Hellenic Bank Association’s published calendar. State archaeological sites and museums, on the six days the Ministry of Culture’s decisions name. Public transport typically runs a reduced holiday timetable, which the operator publishes and we do not.
What is usually trading. In a tourist town in season, tavernas, cafes, bakeries and the small shops that live on visitors generally work through a holiday, because the holiday is the trade. That is a pattern and we are stating it as a pattern, not as a guarantee. The smaller and more local the business, the more the answer depends on the family that runs it, so if one specific place matters to your day, ask that place.
The same holiday in central Athens, on Naxos in August and in a mountain village in November is three different days, and the difference is not the law. It is who is open for business. Siesta and opening hours takes that spectrum apart properly.
Two things cost real money on the day. Pharmacies work a duty roster on holidays rather than all opening at once, and the mechanics of that roster are on pharmacies and health . And a city supermarket is the thing most likely to be shut at the moment you want bread.
One line on cash, then a link. A bank holiday is not an ATM holiday, but a long weekend is exactly when a cash-only taverna and an emptied machine find each other. Money in Greece has the rest.
The museum calendar: six closed days, two half days, and the days you get in free
The Ministry of Culture publishes both halves of this calendar, and the free half is worth more to you than the closed half.
The six closed days, at state archaeological sites, monuments and museums: 1 January, 25 March, 1 May, Orthodox Easter Sunday, 25 December and 26 December.
The two half days: Good Friday, open 12:00 to 17:00, and Holy Saturday, open 08:30 to 15:30. Holy Week is the week the Acropolis keeps the strangest hours of its year.
The free-admission days, published by the same Ministry: 6 March, in memory of Melina Mercouri; 18 April, the International Day for Monuments and Sites; 18 May, International Museum Day; the last weekend of September, for the European Heritage Days; 28 October; and every first and third Sunday of the month from 1 November to 31 March. If your Athens day can move onto one of them, the Acropolis costs you nothing to enter.
Two caveats, both real. A free day is a busy day, and the queue is the price you pay instead of the ticket. And the Ministry’s list governs state sites and museums only: the Acropolis Museum is a separate institution from the Acropolis itself, publishes its own calendar, and is not inside the free-admission regime. Do not blur the two. The monasteries at Meteora keep their own days too, individually, and each one closes on a different day of the week.
Now the honest limit of all this, because it is the difference between a page that helps you and a page that strands you. The Ministry’s list is a list of closures. A date’s absence from it does not prove that anything is open, and we are not going to convert a silence into an opening. Epiphany on 6 January is the clean example: it is a bank holiday, and it is not on the closed list we read. That is not the same as a promise. For the day you are actually going, read that site’s own page, and for the same reason, read it for the hours as well: we print no opening hours for any site here, ever, and the annual decision that sets them is reissued every year. A day in Athens is easy to move by one day and expensive to waste.
Check two dates before you book anything
Everything above reduces to one habit.
Find the year’s Orthodox Easter, which is not your Easter, and see whether it touches your window. Then look at where 15 August falls and decide whether you are booking into it or around it. Those two checks take a minute, and they are the difference between a trip that runs and a trip that queues.
What we re-check on this page, and when: the Ministry of Culture’s closure and free-admission lists, the Hellenic Bank Association’s bank calendar, and any ministerial decision that moves a holiday. Last checked 13 July 2026.
What those two weeks are actually like is on Greek Easter and mid-August . Which month to pick in the first place is on the best time to visit Greece.
Common questions
What are the public holidays in Greece?
Greece has around a dozen. The fixed ones are 1 and 6 January, 25 March, 1 May, 15 August, 28 October, and 25 and 26 December. The rest move with Orthodox Easter: Clean Monday, Good Friday, Easter Monday and the Monday of the Holy Spirit. The obligatory holidays are codified in Article 60 of Law 4808/2021; the closures are published separately by the Ministry of Culture and the Hellenic Bank Association. The two that change a visitor’s trip are Orthodox Easter, whose date moves, and 15 August, the domestic travel peak.
When is Greek Easter, and why is it not the same as mine?
Greek Orthodox Easter is computed on the Julian calendar with an older lunar table, so it usually falls on a different Sunday from Western Easter, and when the two differ the Greek date is the later one, by anything from a week to five weeks. Sometimes they coincide: in 2028 both fall on 16 April. Look up the Orthodox date for your own year before you book spring travel. April in Greece is a completely different country on either side of it.
Is the Acropolis open on public holidays?
State archaeological sites and museums, the Acropolis among them, are closed on 1 January, 25 March, 1 May, Orthodox Easter Sunday, 25 December and 26 December, per the Ministry of Culture’s published decisions. On Good Friday they open 12:00 to 17:00 and on Holy Saturday 08:30 to 15:30. The same decisions state that they operate normally on Easter Monday, the Monday of the Holy Spirit, 15 August and 28 October. For any other day, read the site’s own page rather than inferring an opening from a silence.
Do shops and restaurants close on Greek public holidays?
Institutions close: banks, public offices, state museums and archaeological sites. In a tourist town in season, tavernas, cafes and bakeries generally trade straight through a public holiday, because the holiday is their busiest day. That is a pattern rather than a promise, and the smaller and more local the business, the more it depends on the family running it, so check with the place itself. The thing most likely to be shut when you want it is a city supermarket.
Do ferries run on Greek public holidays?
Sailings on a holiday are set by the operator, and the operator’s own site or app is the only live answer. This site publishes no sailing data. What matters more than the timetable is the demand: around the big holidays, and above all in the fortnight around 15 August, the competition for a seat is domestic and heavy, so book early rather than assuming there is space. How the network itself works is on Greek island ferries.
Should I avoid Greece around 15 August?
That depends on what you came for, and the trade is worth stating plainly. Mid-August is when Greeks themselves travel, so the boats and the island rooms are full and expensive. It is also when the country is at its most alive, with a festival in almost every village. If you are going then, book like a Greek: months ahead, not weeks. If what you want is an empty beach, that fortnight is the worst two weeks of the year to look for one.
Can a Greek public holiday be moved?
Yes, and this is the fact that decides which sources to trust. When 1 May collides with Holy Week, the Minister of Labour transfers the May Day holiday by decision published in the Government Gazette. It happened in 2024, when 1 May fell on Holy Wednesday and the holiday moved to 7 May, and the bank calendar records the same move in 2016. So the authoritative source for a Greek holiday is the published act, not a calendar website, and that includes this page a year from now.
Is Clean Monday a public holiday in Greece?
In practice, entirely. Clean Monday, the start of Orthodox Lent, is 48 days before Easter Sunday and moves with it. Schools, banks and public services close, families go out to fly kites and eat lenten food, and it is one of the best days of the Greek year to be there for. Sources differ on whether it is strictly obligatory for private employers under Article 60 of Law 4808/2021, and the article does not settle that. Whatever its legal status, it behaves like a holiday.