Ten Days Away on Five Days' Leave
The 2027 Australian Public Holiday Calendar
Ten days away on five days' leave
Annual leave is the only thing we're given that we routinely refuse to spend. Not me!
Over the years annual leave has been a lifeline to me which has allowed me access into the big, wide world for 4 or 5 weeks a year that I have relished! Never enough time to go to all the incredible places, but with some careful planning, we can make the most of every minute. Embrace your unique circumstances and maximise on the public holidays before any of your colleagues get wind!
It sits there accruing. It rolls over. It gets quietly absorbed into other people's plans — a school holiday, a wedding interstate, someone else's crisis — and then another year has gone and the trip is still a conversation you have in the car.
Part of the problem is arithmetic. A proper trip feels like it costs two weeks of leave, and two weeks feels like more than you can justify. So you don't book it, and you take four days off in dribs and drabs instead, and none of them feel like anything.
But the arithmetic is wrong. Australia hands out a small number of long weekends every year, and if you build a trip around one instead of ignoring it, ten days away costs you five days of leave rather than eight. Do that twice in a year and you have had two real holidays for the price of one.
Here is every window worth knowing about between now and the end of 2027.
The Calendar
These are New South Wales dates. Easter and Christmas fall the same everywhere in Australia, but the Anzac Day Monday and the Labour Day dates vary by state, so check yours before you book anything.
WINDOW DATES DS/OFF LEAVE
Labour Day 3 – 11 Oct 26 9 4
Christmas 25 Dec–3 Jan 27 10 3
Australia Day 22–31 Jan 27 10 5
Easter 20 Mar–4 Apr 27 16 8
Easter 26 Mar–4 Apr 27 10 4
Anzac Day 23 Apr–2 May 27 10 5
King's B’day 11–20 Jun 27 10 5
Labour Day 1–10 Oct 27 10 5
Two of these are unusually good
Easter 2027 is the one to plan your year around. Good Friday falls on 26 March and Easter Monday on the 29th. Take the week before and the week after and you are away from Saturday 20 March to Sunday 4 April — sixteen days — for eight days of leave. That is not a long weekend. That is a proper trip, the kind you come home from different.
It is also, as it happens, cherry blossom season in Japan.
Christmas 2026 has the best ratio of the lot. Christmas Day falls on the Friday, Boxing Day on the Saturday, and with the substitute holiday and New Year's Day you get ten days off — 25 December to 3 January — for three days of leave. Three.
The catch is that it is also the most expensive fortnight of the year to fly anywhere, and everyone else's family wants those days too. Whether that trade is worth it depends entirely on whose Christmas you would be missing.
Which window suits which trip
Labour Day, October 2026 — nine days for four, and the soonest. New Zealand's North Island, if you want something you could book this month.
Christmas 2026 — ten days for three. Sri Lanka or Cambodia, both at their best in the dry season, both a long way from anyone's Christmas lunch.
Australia Day 2027 — ten days for five. Cambodia, Thailand or Sri Lanka. Dry, cooler, and the flights have come back down from the Christmas peak.
Easter 2027 — sixteen days for eight. Japan, and it isn't close. Book it a year out.
Anzac Day 2027 — ten days for five. Anzac Day falls on the Sunday so New South Wales gets the Monday. Vietnam, Thailand, or a second run at somewhere you rushed.
King's Birthday, June 2027 — ten days for five. Bali in the dry season, before the July crowds arrive and the prices follow them.
Labour Day, October 2027 — ten days for five. Autumn in Japan or spring in New Zealand, and you can have either.
One thing before you go and look at flights
Book the good windows early. Everyone works this out eventually — the airlines certainly have — and fares for the fortnight around Easter and Christmas move long before the rest of the year does. If you are going to use one of these, the useful thing to do this week is not to book the flight. It is to put the leave in.
The leave request is the hard part. Once the dates are locked at work, the trip has somewhere to happen, and everything after that is detail.
