UK Bank Holidays API

Beginner's Pick Calendar / No Auth Required Beginner HTTPS

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Metadata Score Metadata estimate · not endpoint-tested

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Overview

The UK Bank Holidays API is an official UK government endpoint that returns all bank holidays for England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland as structured JSON. The data is maintained and updated directly by the government, making it authoritative and reliable. No authentication is required — the URL itself (gov.uk/bank-holidays.json) is the complete API.

Beginner Tip

This is one of the most reliable no-auth APIs available: just fetch https://www.gov.uk/bank-holidays.json and you immediately get structured JSON. The top-level keys are 'england-and-wales', 'scotland', and 'northern-ireland' — pick the one relevant to your users.

Available Data

The kind of data this API exposes, based on its documentation. We could not call the endpoint to confirm the exact field names.

event dates and names

holiday lists by country

date metadata

Example Response

Illustrative shape only — we were not able to call this endpoint (it requires credentials or exposes no public sample URL), so the fields below show the kind of data this API returns rather than a recorded response.

JSON Response · Illustrative

{
  "status": "success",
  "data": {
    "result": "Data from UK Bank Holidays",
    "description": "Bank holidays in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland",
    "timestamp": "2025-01-15T10:00:00Z"
  }
}

Field Reference

england-and-wales Container for bank holiday data covering England and Wales, with 'division' and 'events' sub-fields

scotland Container for bank holiday data specific to Scotland

northern-ireland Container for bank holiday data specific to Northern Ireland

events[].title Official name of the bank holiday, e.g. 'Christmas Day' or 'New Year Day'

events[].date Date of the bank holiday in YYYY-MM-DD format

events[].bunting Whether the government recommends displaying bunting for this holiday

Implementation Example

Calls a real endpoint of this API. Replace any placeholder credentials with your own key.

Request

const url = "https://www.gov.uk/";
const response = await fetch(url);
if (!response.ok) throw new Error(`Request failed: ${response.status}`);
const data = await response.json();
console.log(data);

What Can You Build?

Note: These code examples are AI-generated and unverified. Always refer to the official API documentation for accurate usage.

Common Errors & Troubleshooting

Generated guidance based on this API's documentation, not observed by us. Treat it as a starting point and check against the provider's own error reference.

Unexpected data structure Developers expect a flat array but the response is an object keyed by region

✓ Access the correct region key first, e.g. data['england-and-wales'].events, to get the holiday array.

CORS error in the browser gov.uk sets CORS headers that may block certain browser origins

✓ Fetch this on the server side and cache the result — the data only changes a few times per year.

Missing upcoming holidays The file may not yet include the next calendar year's dates early in the year

✓ Check the 'bunting' field on the last known event; the government typically publishes next-year data by mid-year.

Metadata Score Breakdown

Estimated from metadata — endpoint not independently tested

This score is estimated from observable metadata — HTTPS support, authentication model, declared CORS, and documentation reachability — because the API requires authentication or exposes no publicly testable endpoint. The five-signal breakdown is only shown for live-tested APIs.

Metadata estimate · endpoint not independently tested

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