Public holidays in Sweden

Some public holidays in Sweden always occur on Sundays but are, in fact, official public holidays. This will usually not affect working schedules or ordinary opening hours.

The day before an official holiday is in most cases treated as a de facto holiday in two variants, full day and half day.

The de facto holidays are almost always treated as official holidays by employers, so most employees working regular office hours do not work these days.

The de facto half holidays are often treated with the afternoon off, but this varies depending on employer. It is more common to work a full workday than not these days. Many of the employees that have half days off have a slightly longer workweek the rest of the year to compensate for the time off. In many cases employees take the whole day off, combining the half holiday with some other form of leave.

For most employees there is little practical difference between these eves and the other Saturdays of the year, which means they are de facto holidays.

Days between a holiday and a weekend are in Swedish called klämdagar (squeeze days). These may arise at different holidays, but there is one permanent klämdag every year. Many people are off work on klämdagar getting long weekends. In some cases employers treat some of these days as de facto holidays; in other cases people may use some form of leave (e.g. vacation).

During Christmas week and the days before and after Epiphany many Swedes are off from work, combining holidays, de facto holidays and other forms of leave (e.g., vacation). It is, in fact, quite common to leave work before Christmas Eve and then not come back to work until around 10 January (after the weekend after Epiphany). Most people, however, work at least some of these days. For instance, in 2019, Christmas Eve falls on a Tuesday, with Christmas Day falling on a Wednesday and St. Stephen's Day on a Thursday. Thus, some employees are automatically allowed the day off (as they are klämdagar) on the Monday before Christmas Eve (23 December) and the Friday after St. Stephen's Day (27 December), while others chose to take those days off as vacation. The same goes for the Monday before New Year's Eve (30 December). However, the Thursday and Friday after New Year's Day ( 2 and 3 January 2020) are not considered klämdagar, since they are two workdays falling next to each other. Thus, if people wanted those days off, they would have had to take them as vacation. As most people in Sweden are not required to work on Saturdays or Sundays, people could work their last day on 20 December, having taken two or five vacation days, and then not have to return to work until 7 January (the Tuesday after Epiphany).