How to plan annual leave around public holidays

The basic idea

Annual leave is worth more when it sits next to days you were already getting off. A Monday-to-Friday worker who takes leave on a random week in March spends five days for nine days off (the week plus the weekends either side). The same five days taken between Easter Monday and Anzac Day in a year when they are close can produce fourteen or more. The gap between those two results is entirely about where the leave lands.

The unit to think in is the bridge: the working days between a public holiday and a weekend, or between two public holidays. A Tuesday holiday has a one-day bridge (the Monday). A Thursday holiday has a one-day bridge (the Friday). Two holidays a week apart have a four-day bridge. Fill a bridge and every day on either side comes along free.

The combinations that usually work

• Christmas to New Year. Three working days between Boxing Day and New Year's Day in most years, buying ten or eleven days off. The best value in the calendar, everywhere, every year.
• Easter and Anzac Day. When Easter is late (mid-April onwards) the gap from Easter Monday to 25 April can be as little as a week. Four or five days of leave then covers Good Friday to the Anzac weekend. When Easter is early the two are separate breaks.
• Melbourne Cup Day (VIC). A Tuesday holiday, so one day of leave on the Monday gives a four-day weekend. Nearly always the cheapest bridge in Victoria.
• Reconciliation Day and the King's Birthday (ACT). Two Mondays one or two weeks apart at the start of winter; four days of leave between them gives ten off.
• Show days and Picnic Day (NT). Darwin Show Day on a Friday in late July and Picnic Day on the first Monday in August can be a week apart.
• Any Monday holiday. Four days of leave for a nine-day break is the reliable fallback, and the Thursday and Friday before a Monday holiday gives a five-day break for two days of leave.

How the planner scores it

The long weekend planner on this site runs the calendar for your state and the number of leave days you are willing to spend, and scores every possible combination. The score is the number of days off gained beyond the leave you spend, with return per leave day as the tie-break, and it shows one combination per stretch of calendar so the list is not full of near-duplicates. The top pick is the highest score; the cheapest is the best return for the fewest days; the long haul is the longest total break.

It counts full-day public holidays in your state, including substitute and additional days. It does not count part-day holidays or restricted ones like the NSW Bank Holiday, and it treats regional holidays as if they apply statewide, so confirm any combination that leans on a show day.

Things the arithmetic does not know

School holidays overlap most of the good combinations, which means higher prices and busier destinations at Easter, in late September and over Christmas. If you do not have school-age children, the shoulder weeks either side of a school break are often the better deal even if they score lower.

Workplaces have leave rules of their own. Many restrict leave around end-of-financial-year in June, around Christmas for retail, or around the busy season for their industry. Others close over Christmas and require leave to be taken then, which changes the calculation. Check your award or agreement for shutdown clauses.

Book early. Everyone with the same calendar reaches the same conclusions, so the days between Christmas and New Year, and the bridge after Easter, are the first to fill up in any leave roster. If your workplace approves leave in order of request, the best time to ask is when next year's dates are published, which is why this site lists two years ahead.

State by state

The combinations differ enough between states that a plan copied from a Sydney colleague can be wrong in Brisbane. Queensland's King's Birthday is in October, not June. Western Australia's is in September. South Australia and the ACT have March Mondays that Victoria and Tasmania share but NSW does not. The state pages (VIC, NSW, QLD, SA, WA, TAS, NT, ACT) each list the top long weekend combinations for the year alongside the holiday dates.