🇺🇸How does United States mark Founders and National Leaders?

Presidents' Day / Washington's Birthday

Local date

February 15, 2027

When is it?

The third Monday in February. The 1968 Uniform Monday Holiday Act moved it off the fixed date of 22 February.

Section 6103(a) of title 5 of the U.S. Code lists eleven legal public holidays by name, and the third Monday in February appears as Washington's Birthday. Congress has never renamed it. What Congress did do, in Pub. L. 90–363 of 1968 (the Uniform Monday Holiday Act), was move it off the fixed date of 22 February onto a Monday — with the side effect that the holiday now always falls between 15 and 21 February and can never land on Washington's actual birthday. OPM attaches a footnote to every year's table: other institutions such as state and local governments and private businesses may use other names, but its policy is always to refer to holidays by the names designated in the law. States really do differ. Virginia Code § 2.2-3300 calls it "George Washington Day to honor George Washington (1732–1799), the first President of the United States" — one man. Washington State's RCW 1.16.050(1)(d) calls it "Presidents' Day," celebrated "as the anniversary of the births of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington" — two men. Two other individuals are named in the same federal section: the Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., added by Pub. L. 98–144 in 1983, and Columbus Day, whose federal wording is untouched even where states have renamed their own version of the day.