Brazil Public Holidays

Brazil's state and municipal governments can also declare their own local holidays on top of the national list, and several Brazilian cities grant an extra half-day or full day off around Carnival specifically, even though Carnival itself isn't a federal statutory holiday.

Brazil's national public holidays combine Catholic religious observances with civic and historical commemorations, and — importantly — Brazil's calendar doesn't include Carnival as an official national public holiday, even though it functions as one of the country's most significant cultural events; Carnival's timing is tied to the Christian liturgical calendar (occurring before Ash Wednesday) and its observance as time off work is more a matter of widespread local custom and municipal decree than federal statute.

Independence Day (September 7) marks Brazil's 1822 declaration of independence from Portugal, achieved without the large-scale war that characterized independence movements in several other Latin American countries.

Tiradentes Day (April 21) commemorates Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, a martyred figure of an early independence conspiracy against Portuguese colonial rule, executed in 1792 — one of relatively few countries with a public holiday honoring a specific individual revolutionary figure by name.

Our Lady of Aparecida (October 12), Brazil's patron saint day, is a full national public holiday, reflecting Catholicism's historically central role in Brazilian civic life even as the country's religious makeup has diversified considerably in recent decades.

Because Brazil is such a large country spanning multiple states, some "national" holidays are supplemented by additional state-specific civic holidays (commemorating a state's own founding or a locally significant historical event), a further layer of real regional variation on top of the shared federal calendar.

All Souls' Day (Finados, November 2) is a full national holiday in Brazil, distinct from how some other Catholic-majority countries treat the same date more as a solemn observance without a guaranteed day off — a genuine difference in how the same liturgical date is codified into national labor law.

Brazilian labor law distinguishes "feriados" (statutory holidays) from "pontos facultativos" (optional, discretionary non-working days government offices may declare, often bridging a holiday to the nearest weekend) — the latter aren't guaranteed nationwide and are decided year by year, adding a further layer of genuine annual variability beyond the fixed statutory list.

Brazil's federal government publishes its own official "pontos facultativos" decree each year specifically for federal public servants, which private employers are free to follow or not — meaning the actual extra bridge-day closures private businesses observe can genuinely differ from the federal government's own office schedule in the same year.

Brazil's 1988 Constitution, the country's current founding legal document following the end of military rule, doesn't itself have a dedicated national holiday, unlike some other countries on this page that mark their own constitution's adoption with a specific civic date.

Brazil's national holiday list is set through federal statute and applies uniformly to all 26 states and the Federal District, with the real variation instead coming from each state's or municipality's own additional civic dates layered on top rather than from any difference in how the federal list itself is applied.

Carnival and Good Friday are movable and computed separately.

Source: Brazilian federal public holiday statute, as of 2026-07-12.