May Bank Holiday 2027

It is the May Day holiday. The first Monday in May has long been a bank holiday in Scotland; the rest of the UK gained it in 1978, as a spring holiday tied to May Day and International Workers' Day on 1 May.

Because it is fixed to a Monday, it only lands on May Day itself when 1 May is a Monday. Its future has been debated more than once: in 2011 the government floated moving it to October or to a patron saint's day, but nothing came of it.

They have separate origins. The late May bank holiday is the old Whit Monday holiday, fixed to the last Monday in May in 1971, and usually falls in school half-term. The Early May bank holiday was added seven years later as a May Day holiday.

May is the only month that always has two Monday bank holidays. When Easter is late, three long weekends can fall within about five weeks.

• Shops and supermarkets: open, many with shorter bank holiday hours.
• Banks and post: bank branches are closed and Royal Mail does not normally deliver.
• Trains and buses: often a Sunday or reduced timetable, and engineering works are common on both weekends.
• Benefits: If a benefit or State Pension payment is due on a bank holiday, it is usually paid on the working day before. Child Benefit and some Scottish and Northern Irish payments follow their own published dates.

May Day customs are far older than the bank holiday: maypole dancing, morris sides, the crowning of a May Queen and dawn singing from Magdalen Tower in Oxford.