How HolidayMaximizer calculates your breaks

One calendar day is counted once: first as a listed public holiday, otherwise as a Saturday/Sunday weekend, otherwise as an annual-leave day.

From inputs to recommendations

Select where you work, including a region when relevant, and your planning year.
Enter your remaining bookable leave and choose a trip-length range.
The calculator scans consecutive date windows, including December before and January after the selected year. A result must intersect the selected year, include at least one holiday and require at least one leave day.
It rejects windows exceeding your leave allowance, then ranks the remaining choices and suppresses overlapping recommendations.

Efficiency, not a guaranteed global optimum

Efficiency = consecutive days off ÷ leave days. The ranking gives this the largest weight, with smaller preferences for longer trips, holiday count and year-boundary breaks. It is a heuristic for choosing individual breaks, not a solver that spends your entire annual allowance across a globally optimal schedule.

The exact score is 12 × efficiency + 0.28 × trip days + 0.45 × calendar holidays − 0.15 × (leave used / allowance), plus 2.5 for crossing a year boundary. Up to ten non-overlapping alternatives are displayed. Each alternative has its own allowance test; do not add all their leave costs and assume the total fits.

Check the arithmetic

In Ireland, 27 March–4 April 2027 gives nine days away from work: four leave days (30 March–2 April), four weekend days and Easter Monday. The efficiency is 9 ÷ 4 = 2.25. Explore the complete example and holiday source.

Assumptions that matter

The workweek is Monday–Friday. Shift patterns and different weekends are not modeled.
A calendar holiday is assumed to be a non-working day. Employer and regional rules can override this.
A holiday on Saturday or Sunday does not save an additional weekday. The displayed categories never double-count that date.
Cross-year leave is counted together in the result; your employer may charge it to separate leave years.
For the current year, past start dates are excluded. For other years, the full selected calendar is considered.
If a selected year has no supported holiday data, no recommendations are shown. A missing calendar is not a claim that the country has no holidays.

Country guide schedules

The 2027 guides use the same calculator and bundled data. Their 10-day and 20-day schedules select affordable, non-overlapping options in ranked order. They show unused leave and count days off only inside the selected breaks. They are reproducible examples, not guaranteed maximum annual totals.

Calculation review: 2026-10-17. Sources and data coverage · Report a correction.