New Zealand Public Holidays 2028

New Zealand has 11 national public holidays. For New Year (Jan 1–2), Waitangi Day, Anzac Day, Christmas Day and Boxing Day, a rule called "Mondayisation" applies: if the date falls on a weekend and the employee would not otherwise have worked, the day off transfers to the following Monday (or Tuesday) so the holiday is not lost.

Three of the five are Mondayised in 2028. New Year’s Day (Sat Jan 1) moves to Monday January 3, the day after New Year (Sun Jan 2) moves to Tuesday January 4, and Waitangi Day (Sun Feb 6) moves to Monday February 7. Anzac Day falls on Tuesday April 25 and Christmas and Boxing Day on Monday and Tuesday, so those three need no adjustment — a lighter year than 2027, when five holidays were transferred.

One important nuance: Mondayisation depends on whether you would normally have worked that weekend day. If you regularly work Saturdays, the public holiday for you is the Saturday itself, not the transferred Monday. The transferred day cannot be claimed twice.

Matariki, the Māori New Year, became New Zealand’s newest public holiday in 2022 and is the first to recognise te ao Māori (the Māori world view). Unlike Easter, its date is not calculated by a formula the public can apply: the Matariki Advisory Group determined a fixed list of dates for 2022 to 2052, and that list is written into Schedule 1 of Te Kāhui o Matariki Public Holiday Act 2022. The 2028 entry is 14 July.

The dates follow the Tangaroa lunar period of the Māori month of Matariki and are always set to the nearest Friday, so Matariki always produces a three-day weekend. The 2028 Tangaroa period runs 15–18 July, hence the Friday 14 July holiday. That is the latest Matariki in the entire 30-year schedule, tied with 2023 — a full three weeks later than 2025’s 20 June.

On top of the 11 national holidays, each region observes its own Anniversary Day — for example Auckland and Northland (late January), Wellington (around January 22), Nelson (early February), Taranaki (second Monday in March), Otago (late March), Southland (Easter Tuesday), Canterbury (mid November) and Westland (early December). These are public holidays only within that region, so a day off in Auckland may be a normal working day in Wellington.

Anniversary days are generally observed on the Monday nearest the actual date, but local custom overrides that in several regions — Taranaki moves to the second Monday in March to avoid Easter, Hawke’s Bay takes the Friday before Labour Day, and South Canterbury observes Dominion Day on the fourth Monday in September. Employment New Zealand publishes the observed dates region by region, and notes that the definitive source is your local council.