Take a break instead of overtime How to double your vacation in 2026
Clever use of bridging days can help maximize vacation time. And with a little planning, you can make the most of 2026.
No time? blue News summarizes for you
- Bridge days can be used optimally to extend vacations.
- If you use your vacation days correctly, you can double your vacation time.
We all know them - the colleague who feels like they're always on vacation. Negotiated more vacation days? Hardly. The secret is to use bridging days. And we'll show you how to plan them cleverly and become an out-of-office legend yourself.
Overall, we will benefit from fewer days off in 2026: the Swiss National Day celebrations on August 1 will fall on a Saturday in 2026. But if you schedule your vacation days on bridging days, you will benefit from having almost twice as many days off. mycation has calculated how this works. By the way: if you work in the canton of Ticino or Lucerne, you can have the most days off. Different rules apply depending on the canton - in this overview you can quickly find out when vacations are most worthwhile in your canton.
5 days over New Year
If you can still take a spontaneous vacation, you should do so in January. To enjoy five days over the long weekend, you only need to take time off on New Year's Eve and Friday, January 2, depending on the canton. Perfect for a spontaneous trip on New Year's Eve!
10 days at Easter
If you take vacations from March 30 to April 2, you have doubled your vacation. Thanks to the public holidays, you have a total of 28 March to 6 April to spend the spring in Oman or Vietnam, for example.
Extended weekend at the beginning of May
Labor Day is celebrated in Zurich, Basel, Jura, Neuchâtel, Schaffhausen, Thurgau and Ticino. If you work in one of these cantons, you should take a day off on Friday, May 2 and enjoy four days off.
9 days off on Ascension Day
The Ascension weekend is also a good time to take a longer vacation. To do this, you have to submit vacation days from 11 to 13 May and on 15 May. In total, you can then enjoy a vacation from 09 to 17 May. If you want that summer feeling, go to Morocco; if you're looking for a more active vacation, Norway is just the place for you at this time of year. You can find more tips for May in this list.
Up to 10 days off at Whitsun
Your work colleagues are already away on Ascension Day? No problem: at the end of May, there is once again the potential to take longer time off. To do this, you need to enter four days from May 26 to 29. This gives you at least nine days off from May 23 to 31. Depending on the canton, Whit Monday is also a day off.
Bonus tip: Do you have the option of working remotely? Then you should plan some time off in the spring in combination with a workation. If you combine Ascension Day and Whitsun with five vacation days between 18 and 22 May, you will enjoy a total of at least 23 days off, even though you have only entered 12 vacation days. If you also work abroad for a month, you will enjoy a total of almost two months abroad.
Extended weekend on the Feast of the Assumption
The Feast of the Assumption is treated as a public holiday in the cantons of Aargau, Appenzell Innerrhoden, Fribourg, Graubünden, Lucerne, Nidwalden, Obwalden, Schwyz, Solothurn, Ticino, Uri, Valais and Zug. In 2026, this will fall on the Tuesday of December 8. So if you want to spend a weekend in the mountains on St. Nicholas Day, submit a vacation day on December 7.
16 days off at Christmas
Between 2026 and 2027 is the perfect time for a magical winter getaway. This is because you get more than two weeks off if you enter eight days' vacation. This works by entering vacations from December 21 to 24 and from December 28 to 31. You then have time off from December 19 to January 4, 2027 - if that's not a motivator to start planning your vacations extra early!
