Semi-monthly payroll calendar 2026.

Semi-monthly pay dates in 2026

A semi-monthly schedule pays on two fixed calendar days a month, most often the 15th and the last day or the 1st and the 15th, which gives 24 pay dates in 2026 no matter how the weekdays fall. In 2026 the weekday pattern is kind to the 15th-and-last-day schedule: eight dates land on a Saturday or Sunday, and none lands on a Federal Reserve closure, so every move is a plain weekend roll-back to the Friday before. The table shows the default schedule after those moves; the tool above rebuilds it for any two days and adds a period-end column from the lag you enter.

Bank closures in 2026

Direct deposit settles on days the Federal Reserve Banks are open, so the closures below are the days a payday cannot settle. The schedule lists ten closures in 2026. Independence Day is the odd one out: it falls on Saturday July 4, and the schedule’s footnote says that for holidays falling on Saturday the Reserve Banks and Branches are open the preceding Friday. OPM, by contrast, lists Friday July 3 as the 2026 holiday for most federal employees, because 5 U.S.C. 6103(b) treats the preceding Friday as the holiday for pay and leave. Both are right for their own purpose: a federal office is shut on July 3, but a July 3 payday settles.

Which dates move

Eight dates move on the 15th-and-last-day schedule, all because of weekends: Sat Jan 31 to Fri Jan 30; Sun Feb 15 to Fri Feb 13; Sat Feb 28 to Fri Feb 27; Sun Mar 15 to Fri Mar 13; Sun May 31 to Fri May 29; Sat Aug 15 to Fri Aug 14; Sat Oct 31 to Fri Oct 30; Sun Nov 15 to Fri Nov 13. Presidents Day on Monday February 16 sits right after one of them, which is why an employer that rolls forward rather than back would pay Tuesday February 17 instead of Friday February 13. On a 1st-and-15th schedule nine dates move, and the first is New Year’s Day itself: a January 1 payday rolls back to Wednesday December 31, 2025, so 23 of that schedule’s 24 dates are paid inside 2026. The tool flags that row as falling in 2025.

How 2027 differs

The calendar days repeat but the weekdays shift by one, so 2027 has a different set of moves on the same schedule: still eight, but two of them are bank holidays, Presidents Day on Monday February 15 and Memorial Day on Monday May 31. The 2027 semi-monthly calendar lists them. For planning a year-end run, note that Thursday December 31, 2026 is a normal bank day and Friday January 1, 2027 is a closure.

Worked example (2026)

An employee is paid semi-monthly on the 15th and the last day with a 5-day lag. The first payday is Thursday January 15, covering the period that ended January 10. January 31 is a Saturday, so the second payday is Friday January 30, and its period ends January 25. February 15 is a Sunday, so that payday moves to Friday February 13; the Presidents Day closure on Monday February 16 never comes into play because the roll-back goes the other way. February 28 is a Saturday, so the fourth payday is Friday February 27. A $66,000 salary pays $2,750.00 per payday over 24 pay dates, compared with $2,538.46 on 26 biweekly paydays, and the two figures reconcile only across the full year.

Method

The tool places the two pay days in each of the 12 months of 2026, using the last calendar day where a month is shorter than the day you entered or where you entered last. A date that falls on a Saturday, a Sunday or a Federal Reserve closure is moved back one day at a time until it lands on a bank day, and the row is flagged with the reason. Closures from the end of 2025 and the start of 2027 are included so a January 1 or late-December date rolls correctly. The period end is the paid date minus the lag you set. Dates are handled as UTC calendar days so your browser time zone never shifts them. Closures come from the Federal Reserve schedule read on November 11, 2026.

What this does not cover

• State rules on how often and when employees must be paid, and rules on final pay.
• Employers that pay after a weekend or holiday instead of before it.
• Overtime, taxes and net pay: this is a date calendar only.
• Pay dates that depend on a company’s own cutoff rules or on a payroll provider’s submission deadlines.

Figures read from the sources below on November 11, 2026. Last updated November 11, 2026.

Sources

• Federal Reserve Financial Services: Holiday Schedules (FedCash and FedACH, 2026 to 2030) (retrieved November 11, 2026)
• U.S. Office of Personnel Management: Federal Holidays, 2026 list and the Saturday and Sunday rules (retrieved November 11, 2026)