Veterans Day 2026 at a glance
Veterans Day 2026 is Wednesday, November 11. Federal offices are closed. The Federal Reserve's holiday table lists November 11 as a Reserve Bank holiday in 2026, and its FedACH notice shows processing stopping at 11:30 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, November 10 and restarting at 5:30 p.m. Eastern on the holiday itself. The New York Stock Exchange publishes a holiday calendar for 2026, 2027 and 2028, and Veterans Day is not among its listed closures, so the exchange is not scheduled to close.
Mail depends on a notice that has not come out yet. The Postal Service's events page lists Wednesday, November 11 among its 2026 holidays, but the detailed service notice for 2026 was not out when this page was written. The 2025 notice, for Tuesday, November 11, said all Post Office locations would be closed, only Priority Mail Express would be delivered, and regular service would resume the next day.
Why Veterans Day is not a Monday holiday
Most of the federal holidays people think of as long weekends sit on a Monday. Veterans Day is the one that briefly joined them and then walked back out. Public Law 90-363, the Uniform Holiday Bill, was signed on June 28, 1968 and put Washington's Birthday, Memorial Day, Veterans Day and Columbus Day on Mondays. VA's history says the first Veterans Day under the new law was observed "with much confusion" on October 25, 1971, the fourth Monday of that month.
Many states never accepted the move and kept November 11. On September 20, 1975, President Ford signed Public Law 94-97, which put the annual observance back on November 11 starting in 1978. The National Archives dates the Monday interlude as 1971 through 1977. Columbus Day kept its Monday, which is why Columbus Day 2026 lands on October 12 while Veterans Day stays on the 11th.
From Armistice Day to Veterans Day
November 11 marks the 1918 armistice that ended fighting in World War I. An act approved May 13, 1938 (52 Stat. 351) made the date a legal holiday to be known as Armistice Day, dedicated to world peace, and it was primarily a day for veterans of the first world war.
After World War II and the Korean War, veterans' organizations pushed to widen it. Public Law 83-380, approved June 1, 1954, changed the name to Veterans Day. Eisenhower's Proclamation 3071 followed on October 8, 1954 and called on the country to honor veterans of all its wars. Armistice Day is still a national holiday in many other countries, according to the National Archives.
When November 11 lands on a weekend
The statute names the date, so the date does not move. What moves is the day off. Under 5 U.S.C. §6103(b), a holiday on a Saturday becomes a Friday holiday for most federal employees, and OPM applies the Monday rule for Sundays under Executive Order 11582. The table above shows the practical result. In 2028, November 11 is a Saturday and federal employees are off Friday, November 10. In 2029, it is a Sunday and they are off Monday, November 12.
The Federal Reserve does not mirror that on the Saturday side. Its schedule says that for holidays falling on a Saturday the Banks are open the preceding Friday, and for holidays on a Sunday they close the following Monday. So on Friday, November 10, 2028 a federal office can be shut while the Reserve Banks run a normal day, and on Monday, November 12, 2029 both are closed. The Reserve's published table runs through 2030, so its 2031 treatment is not yet known.
What else to check before November 11
Individual banks and credit unions set their own branch hours, and no bank notice was checked for this page, so a branch's own holiday page is the tie-breaker. Retailer and carrier schedules were not checked either. Public schools, state offices and courts differ by state and district, so the local calendar is the source to use.
National Adoption Day also falls in November, but it is counted back from Thanksgiving instead of being fixed to a date, and it is not a federal holiday.