Weekend maxing · 2026
9 long weekends. 28 days off. Zero PTO. Every US federal-holiday long weekend in 2026, with the exact dates and the evening you should leave town.
The trick is treating the evening before as part of the trip: leave Thursday or Friday after work and you can be 300 miles away — or a 4-hour flight away — before bedtime. That makes each of these 9 weekends enough for a real trip: a national park, a beach town, a city you've been meaning to see. WeekendMax shows every destination in range from your city for each weekend, sortable by travel time, total budget, and how crowded it's predicted to be.
US federal holidays create 9 long weekends in 2026 — 28 total days off without using any PTO. That includes Thanksgiving, which is effectively a 4-day weekend.
MLK Day (Saturday, January 17 – Monday, January 19); Presidents' Day (Saturday, February 14 – Monday, February 16); Memorial Day (Saturday, May 23 – Monday, May 25); Juneteenth (Friday, June 19 – Sunday, June 21); Independence Day (Friday, July 3 – Sunday, July 5); Labor Day (Saturday, September 5 – Monday, September 7); Columbus Day (Saturday, October 10 – Monday, October 12); Thanksgiving (Thursday, November 26 – Sunday, November 29); Christmas Day (Friday, December 25 – Sunday, December 27).
Leave the evening before the weekend starts — a Thursday or Friday evening departure makes drives up to ~6 hours and flights up to ~5 hours realistic, which puts hundreds of US destinations in range without taking a day off.