California court holidays in 2026

The 2026 dates that trip people up

These four are court closures that a federal or out-of-state calendar will show as ordinary working days: Lincoln's Birthday (Thursday, February 12); Farmworkers Day (Tuesday, March 31); Native American Day (Friday, September 25); and Day after Thanksgiving (Friday, November 27). A response counted off a date near any of them lands a day late if the roll is missed.

The reverse error costs just as much. Columbus Day is a federal holiday and California courts are open. Lunar New Year, Diwali, Genocide Remembrance Day (April 24) and Admission Day (September 9) are California state holidays but not judicial holidays. The courts are open and the clock keeps running (CCP § 135, Gov. Code § 6700). Treating any of those as a closure produces a deadline that is early, which is survivable, but treating a closure as a working day produces one that is late.

Individual superior courts may also close by emergency order under Government Code § 68115. See Rowan v. Kirkpatrick (2020) 54 Cal.App.5th 289. Those closures cannot be predicted and are not in this list. The official Judicial Council calendar is the controlling source and should be re-checked each year.

What is different about 2026

July 4 falls on a Saturday in 2026, and the published calendar closes the courts the day before, on Friday, July 3, as Cal. Rules of Court, rule 1.11 requires for a Saturday holiday. It is the only shifted closure of 2026, and the only time in these five years that Independence Day is observed before the Fourth; the next time the Fourth lands on a weekend, in 2027, the closure falls after it, on Monday, July 5. A backward count that treats Friday, July 3 as a court day comes out a day short.

The other 2026 wrinkle is November. Veterans Day falls on a Wednesday, which cuts a court week in half, and Thanksgiving with the day after closes most of another, so the month loses three court days across two of its weeks. Earlier in the year the calendar is quiet: from the July 3 closure to Labor Day the courts run 45 straight court days, the longest unbroken stretch of any of the five years here.

Other years

California court holidays 2027California court holidays 2028California court holidays 2029California court holidays 2030

A court-day count started late in 2026 routinely runs into 2027, so a single-year sheet is not always enough. Every closure from 2026 through 2030 is on the full California court holiday calendar, generated from this same function.

To apply these dates rather than read them, the discovery response deadline calculator and the trial countdown calculator both roll against this list automatically and print the weekday next to every date so you can see the roll happened.