The school year is not over, but here we already have the dates of the next official vacation periods. The opportunity to plan our absences and escapades now. But this year, it could sometimes give you a hard time.
Uniform Christmas holidays … but tracking
First certainty: Christmas holidays will be common to all areas, from Saturday December 20, 2025 to Monday January 5, 2026. Apparent advantage: January 1, 2026 falls on a Thursday, allowing the festivities to be extended. But this configuration complicates childcare: the two holidays (Thursday, December 25 and Thursday, January 1) will be followed by worked. For families who cannot pose two full weeks, it means having to find a childcare for these two isolated days. We will have to think about it before!
Advantage areas, penalized areas: Who is doing well?
As every year, the February and spring holidays are offset between areas to limit tourist flows. But this division is not without consequences.
Zone C (Académies de Paris, Créteil, Versailles, Toulouse, Montpellier) : great winner of the year. In May 2026, his students will benefit from a favorable chain of holidays. May 1 fell during their holidays, followed by an extended weekend on May 8, then a five-day bridge from May 13 to 17. Result: only nine weeks of lessons after Easter, including six complete, before the long holidays.
Zone A (Academies of Lyon, Grenoble, Poitiers, etc.) : the most disadvantaged. Spring holidays begin on Easter Monday (lost holiday). Then, the students will chain eleven weeks of class without interruption until July 4. A consolation: a long weekend in May with the ascent, offering a well-deserved breathing.
Zone B (Academies of Lille, Nantes, Strasbourg, etc.) : Between the two. With ten weeks of lessons after Easter, it does not benefit from as many cuts as zone C, nor from a calendar as little lenient as zone A.
Good news, however for students: no public holidays falls on a Saturday. But that will not make the life of parents’ lives, especially at Christmas or during “bridges”, where isolated days will often have to be managed without childcare structures. As always, it is better to anticipate solutions now.
Details of the holidays by zone
- Coughing (all zones): from October 18 to November 3, 2025
- Christmas (all zones): from December 20, 2025 to January 5, 2026
- Winter ::
- Zone A: February 7 to 23
- Zone B: February 14 to March 2
- Zone C: February 21 to March 9
- Spring (Easter) ::
- Zone A: April 4 to 20
- Zone B: April 11 to 27
- Zone C: April 18 to May 4
Beginning of the long holidays : July 4, 2026 (all zones)