Georgia Public Holidays: 2026 Dates and Pay Rules

If you’re hiring in Georgia, you need to know that public holidays affect scheduling, overtime, time records, and the language in your employment agreements. The core rule is simple: Georgia has statutory holidays, employees are generally off on those days, and work performed on a statutory holiday is treated as overtime.

Georgia’s Labour Code lists the country’s statutory holidays, and the Government of Georgia may also declare additional days off by ordinance. For payroll and compliance teams, that means you need to separate true statutory holidays from extra government-declared closures, then decide in advance how you will handle holiday work, premium pay, or rest time in lieu.

2026 Georgia public holiday calendar 

Paid time off

Employees are usually off on statutory public holidays in Georgia. But the Labour Code does not lay out holiday pay in the same detailed way you might see in other countries, so your employment agreement and payroll policy need to do more of the heavy lifting.

For monthly-salaried employees, the cleanest approach is usually to treat the holiday as part of normal monthly pay when the employee is excused from work on a day that would otherwise be a working day. For hourly employees, you should be explicit about whether statutory holiday hours not worked are paid, and if they are, how you calculate that pay. Leave that vague, and payroll ends up guessing later. If you are reviewing time-off rules more broadly across markets, our guide to paid vacation days by country is a helpful reference point.

Your employment agreement should spell out how remuneration works, what the normal work schedule is, how statutory holidays are handled, and how overtime or time off in lieu will be approved and recorded. That sounds basic, but it is the difference between a smooth payroll run and a messy one.

Holiday work in Georgia and what payroll needs to process it

This is the key rule to remember: in Georgia, working on a statutory holiday is treated as overtime.

That means holiday hours are not handled as ordinary hours alone. Overtime must be paid at an increased hourly rate, but the holiday and overtime provisions of Georgia’s Labour Code leave the exact premium to agreement between you and the employee. So the law requires an uplift, but your documents need to define what that uplift actually is.

For payroll, you need three things every time:

• Hours worked on the holiday. Track them separately from regular hours.
• Employee’s hourly rate. Even for salaried employees, payroll needs a clear method for converting salary to an hourly basis.
• Agreed on overtime premium. Put the premium in the employment agreement, a policy incorporated into the agreement, or another written record you can produce later.

If you don’t have these inputs, you can’t calculate holiday work correctly.

Time off in lieu for public holiday work in Georgia

Georgia gives you options. Instead of paying the overtime premium, you and the employee can agree on an additional proportional rest period.

This can work well when you need holiday coverage, but the employee would rather take time back than receive extra pay. The important part is documentation. Record the holiday worked, the number of hours, the proportional rest entitlement, the date the rest time will be taken, and who approved it.

The Labour Code says that additional rest should generally be granted within four weeks after the overtime work unless the parties agree otherwise. So if an employee works eight hours on Independence Day, you can document that those eight hours will be offset by proportional paid rest within the next four weeks, based on the written arrangement you already use for overtime compensation.

Say a payroll specialist works four hours on April 10, 2026, because you need urgent support. Instead of paying the agreed holiday overtime premium, you agree in writing that the employee will take four hours of additional rest the following week. HR keeps the written approval, payroll codes the four holiday hours separately, and the time record shows when the substitute rest was actually taken.

Government-declared additional days off in Georgia

Statutory holidays and extra government-declared days off are not the same thing, and your payroll team should not treat them the same way.

The Government of Georgia can declare additional days off by ordinance, often close to major holiday periods. If that happens, employers may still need coverage, but you should check the wording of the ordinance, your internal policy, and local advice before assuming the day should be processed like a standard statutory holiday.

This is one of those details that catches teams off guard. Check official announcements close to major holiday periods so you are not rewriting schedules at the last minute.

Payroll setup checklist for Georgia public holidays

A clean setup leads to clean, repeatable results.

• Keep a yearly holiday calendar in your payroll system. Update it at the start of each year and review it again before Easter.
• Flag statutory holiday hours separately from regular hours. Do not bury them inside normal attendance codes.
• Confirm the overtime premium or time-off-in-lieu approach in writing. Payroll should never have to infer the rule.
• Confirm how weekend overlap is handled in your policy. Georgia does not automatically move holidays to Monday.
• Store approvals and time records for audit-readiness. Keep the holiday-work approval and the final time record together.

Georgia holiday compliance and employment documentation

Your employment agreement should define remuneration, working time, rest time, and overtime compensation terms in language payroll can apply without interpretation. You should also maintain working time records that show when holiday work happened, how many hours were worked, and whether those hours were paid at the agreed premium or exchanged for rest time.

You also need to be careful with protected groups. Georgia restricts overtime for certain employees unless they consent, including pregnant employees, employees who have recently given birth or are breastfeeding, certain employees with disabilities, minors, supporters or representatives of persons with disabilities, and employees with children under three in the cases covered by the Labour Code. If your team manages holiday-linked pay practices across countries, our article on holiday bonuses in seven countries is a good reminder that local expectations and legal rules do not always line up.

A consistent approval process matters here. The easier you make it to approve, track, and store holiday work records, the easier it is to stay compliant.

Common holiday payroll mistakes 

Watch out for these pitfalls.

• Treating holiday work like normal hours and forgetting the overtime treatment
• Paying a premium without documenting the agreement or the calculation method
• Forgetting Easter dates are movable
• Not monitoring government ordinances for extra days off

FAQs

Are public holidays mandatory days off in Georgia?

They are statutory rest days under the Labour Code. In practice, employees are usually off unless there is a business need for them to work.

Are public holidays paid in Georgia?

Usually, they are handled as paid time for monthly-salaried employees, but your employment agreement and payroll policy should say exactly how holiday time is treated.

Is holiday work overtime in Georgia?

Yes. Work performed on a statutory public holiday is treated as overtime.

Do holidays move when they fall on a weekend in Georgia?

Not automatically. You only shift the day if a government ordinance or your agreement says so.

Can you offer a substitute day off instead of premium pay?

Yes. You and the employee can agree on proportional rest time instead of the overtime premium.

What should be in the employment agreement about holiday pay?

Include the pay structure, working schedule, holiday treatment, overtime premium, approval process, and how time off in lieu is tracked.

How an Employer of Record (EOR) can help

An employer of record is a third party that legally employs your team member in Georgia on your behalf. This allows you to hire without establishing a local entity, avoiding the hidden costs of entity establishment. 

The EOR handles salary offers, employment contracts, payroll, tax withholding, statutory benefits, and all ongoing compliance. You manage the day-to-day work while the EOR handles just about everything else.

For employers testing the market or those who need to scale quickly, an EOR is usually the right choice. You get to reduce risk, move faster, and know all local laws and regulations will be followed.

Pebl handles holidays in Georgia

If you’ve made it this far, you’ve got your sights set on Georgia. Maybe you’ve even found the perfect talent. There’s a lot that needs to be taken care of before you can start hiring—researching taxes, finding experts in local labor law, finding a payroll processor, and more. It takes a lot of time and a lot of money. Wouldn’t it be great if there were an easier way?

With Pebl, there is.

Our EOR platform allows you to hire, pay, and manage employees in 185+ countries around the world without setting up your own local entity. That means your new talent starts in days, not months. We handle it all: onboarding, benefits, salary benchmarking, payroll, and compliance with all local regulations. Every public holiday, overtime or double time pay the law requires, we make sure it happens. All you have to do is stay focused on leading your team.

When you’re ready to do things the easy way, let us know.

This information does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal or tax advice and is for general informational purposes only. The intent of this document is solely to provide general and preliminary information for private use. Do not rely on it as an alternative to legal, financial, taxation, or accountancy advice from an appropriately qualified professional. The content in this guide is provided “as is,” and no representations are made that the content is error-free. 

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