How Many Trading Days Are There in a Year? 2026, 2027 and 2028 Counts

The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq have 251 trading days in 2026, 251 in 2027 and 251 in 2028. Each figure is the number of weekdays in the year minus the weekday holidays on the exchange's official calendar; half days count as full trading days. Over the last 31 years the US count has ranged from 248 to 254, with an average of 251.7; 252, the round number used to annualize daily returns and volatility, sits close to that average.

Other exchanges close on other holidays, so their totals differ: 253 days in London, 254 in Frankfurt on Xetra, 251 in Toronto and 242 in Tokyo in 2026. The table below shows each count, the calendar it comes from and the subtraction behind it.

Trading days per year by exchange (2026 to 2028)

How to read a cell: the first number is the count of Mondays to Fridays in the year, the second is the number of exchange holidays that fall on one of those weekdays. A holiday that lands on a Saturday or a Sunday removes nothing. "Not published" means the exchange had not posted that year's calendar when we checked on November 2, 2026; we do not guess it.

US market holidays and early closes

NYSE and Nasdaq follow the same holiday schedule. The regular session runs from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time; on an early close day it ends at 1:00 p.m., and that shorter day still counts as a trading day.

Two details explain most surprises. When a holiday falls on a weekend, the exchange usually closes on the nearest weekday instead, which is why Independence Day 2026 is observed on Friday, July 3. And when New Year's Day falls on a Saturday, as in 2028, the list simply has no New Year's holiday: the year loses one weekday to the calendar but none to the exchange.

Trading days per month and per quarter

The same subtraction, done month by month, answers the questions about months, quarters and half years. The totals below match the monthly figures in NYSE's own estimate.

• Per quarter: 61, 62, 64 and 64 trading days in 2026; 60, 63, 64 and 64 in 2027; 63, 62, 63 and 63 in 2028.
• Per half year in 2026: 123 from January to June, 128 from July to December.
• Per week: five in a normal week, four in a week with a holiday. A year of 251 trading days is about 50 full weeks of trading.
• Per month on average: 251 divided by 12, about 21. That is why a "one month" lookback is often written as 21 trading days.

London, Toronto, Frankfurt and Tokyo

Each exchange closes on its own national holidays, and some close on days that are not public holidays at all.

• London Stock Exchange. The exchange says it recognizes the public and bank holidays of England and Wales. In 2026 those are January 1, April 3 (Good Friday), April 6 (Easter Monday), May 4, May 25, August 31, December 25 and December 28 (Boxing Day substitute): 8 weekdays, so 253 trading days. In 2027 the list on the exchange's page is January 1, March 26, March 29, May 3, May 31, August 30, December 27 and December 28: again 8 weekdays and 253 days. In 2028 the list is January 3, April 14, April 17, May 1, May 29, August 28, December 25 and December 26: 8 weekdays out of 260, so 252 days. December 24 and December 31 are half days in 2026 and 2027, with the closing process starting at 12:30 London time; in 2028, when both fall on a Sunday, the half days are December 22 and December 29.
• Toronto Stock Exchange. Ten Canadian holidays close the market in 2026: January 1, February 16 (Family Day), April 3, May 18 (Victoria Day), July 1, August 3 (Civic Holiday), September 7, October 12 (Thanksgiving), December 25 and December 28 (in lieu of Boxing Day), so 251 days. December 24 closes early at 1:00 p.m. The page also lists US holidays, but marks them as special settlement days for issues trading in US dollars, not as closures. The 2027 calendar was not yet published.

• Deutsche Börse Xetra. No trading on January 1, April 3, April 6, May 1, December 24, December 25 and December 31 in 2026; December 26 is a Saturday. That is 7 weekdays and 254 days. In 2027, May 1, December 25 and December 26 fall on a weekend, which leaves 5 closed weekdays and 256 trading days, the highest count in this table. The 2028 calendar lists April 14, April 17, May 1, December 25 and December 26 on weekdays, with January 1, December 24 and December 31 on weekends: 5 closed weekdays out of 260, so 255 days. Xetra trades normally on some German public holidays, such as Ascension Day and Whit Monday.
• Japan Exchange Group. Tokyo closes on every Japanese national holiday plus January 2, January 3 and December 31. In 2026, 21 dates are listed and 2 of them fall on a weekend (January 3 and May 3), which leaves 19 closed weekdays and 242 trading days. In 2027, 20 dates are listed, 3 fall on a weekend, so 17 closed weekdays and 244 days. Japan has the shortest trading year of the five.

Past years: what the price data shows

Holiday calendars are published in advance, but exchanges sometimes close at short notice. Counting the days with a closing price in our daily S&P 500 data gives the real number of US sessions in each past year:

Over 31 years, from 1995 to 2025, the count stays between 248 and 254, with a median of 252 and an average of 251.7. Four of the years cut short by unscheduled closures:

• 2025, 250 days. The NYSE closed on Thursday, January 9, 2025, for the national day of mourning for former President Jimmy Carter (ICE announcement).
• 2018, 251 days. The NYSE closed on Wednesday, December 5, 2018, for the national day of mourning for President George H. W. Bush (ICE announcement).
• 2012, 250 days. The NYSE stayed closed on October 29 and 30, 2012, during Hurricane Sandy, and reopened on Wednesday, October 31 (NPR).
• 2001, 248 days. US stock markets stayed closed after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the NYSE reopened on Monday, September 17 (PolitiFact).

Other differences come from the calendar alone: 2023 had only 260 weekdays, against 262 in 2024, so it had fewer sessions with the same holiday list.

Why 252 is used to annualize returns and volatility

A daily statistic becomes a yearly one by scaling it with the number of trading days. For an average return, you multiply by the number of days; for volatility, you multiply by its square root, because variance, not standard deviation, adds up from day to day. Cboe's realized volatility indexes, for example, multiply the average squared daily log return by 252 before taking the square root, and use 252 trading days as their 12 month window (Cboe RVOL methodology).

The difference between 251 and 252 is small, which is why a fixed 252, as in the Cboe indexes, changes little from one year to the next. The market matters more: a market that never closes has more trading days than a stock exchange.

Crypto and forex

Crypto. Bitcoin trades on weekends and holidays too: our daily Bitcoin data has one bar for every calendar day, 365 in 2025 and 366 in the leap year 2024. A crypto year therefore has 365 or 366 trading days, so a daily volatility scaled to the days the market actually trades uses √365, not the √252 of stocks.

Forex. Spot currencies trade between banks and brokers rather than on one exchange, so there is no official holiday calendar to count from. A practical approximation is the number of weekdays, 261 in 2026 and 2027, minus the days your broker lists as closed in its holiday notice.

How to count trading days yourself

1. Count the weekdays of the year: 260, 261 or 262 depending on which day January 1 falls on and whether the year is a leap year.
2. Take the official holiday list from the exchange's own website, not from a general calendar.
3. Remove the holidays that fall on a Saturday or a Sunday.
4. Subtract the remaining holidays. Keep the early close days.
5. For a past year, check the result against the number of daily bars in your price data: an unscheduled closure shows up as one bar fewer.

The count matters for anything measured in sessions: the time to expiration of an option's implied volatility, a moving average "of one year", or the question of whether you can buy and sell stocks on the weekend. For the best and worst sessions of the week, see the best day of the week to buy stocks, and for the first minutes of each session, the opening range. More guides are in trading concepts.