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DENMARK IN 2024

When are Denmark’s public holidays in 2024?

If you're in the midst of planning your holiday activities for 2024, it's always a smart move to check the public holidays and when they fall. Here are the dates you need to know in Denmark.

Published: 5 December 2023 10:15 CET
Updated: 25 December 2023 08:08 CET

With 2024 around the corner, many people in Denmark have already started planning their time off and holiday trips – and with good reason.

Doing so early on gives you the chance to secure reservations for popular destinations that tend to fill up rapidly, especially if you intend to travel during peak tourist seasons. You can also save significant money by planning ahead if your time off involves booking expenses such as accommodation or transportation.

Therefore, organising your holiday time in advance and having a good overview of Denmark’s public holidays will help you eliminate stress and unnecessary extra expenses from the process, which is something that you’ll be grateful for as early as April, when the Easter holiday season begins.

New Year’s Day: January 1st (Monday)

There are many customs and traditions associated with the celebration of New Year in Denmark. You can generally expect the Danes to party hard on New Year’s Eve, and major cities like Copenhagen and Aarhus will likely be very crowded for the occasion.

After the big celebrations, January 1st will mostly be a day of recharging and resting.

Palm Sunday: March 24th (Sunday)

Maundy Thursday: March 28th (Thursday)

Good Friday: March 29th (Friday)

Easter: March 31st (Sunday)

Easter Monday: April 1st (Monday)

The Easter period in Denmark includes Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and Easter Monday, which are designated national holidays. Schools are closed from the beginning of the Easter week from the Monday after Palm Sunday. It’s also common for people to use annual leave from work, and some workplaces might close for the Easter week.

While a lot of these days are simply used for relaxing and enjoying downtime, the staple tradition for many families, and in some cases groups of friends, is the påskefrokost or Easter lunch.

Many people in Denmark also swap chocolate eggs or Easter baskets, and children might take part on Easter egg hunts in the garden at a family gathering.

On Easter Monday, many Danes choose to enjoy the outdoors, with walks, hikes, and picnics being popular options.

Note: Great Prayer Day abolished

After heated parliamentary and public debate in 2023, the government pushed through with its decision to abolish the Great Prayer Day from 2024 onwards.

That means that this centuries-old holiday, observed in Denmark for over three hundred years, will no longer provide a public day off starting in 2024. In previous years, the Great Prayer Day fell on the fourth Friday after Easter. 

Great Prayer Day traditions like confirmations and baking hveder, cardemom-infused buns, are likely to still be practiced as part of this springtime tradition, but most people will now have to fit them around work.

Ascension Day: May 9th (Thursday)

Another Christian holiday, Ascension Day, is observed on the 40th day after Easter and is a public holiday in Denmark, where it is known as Kristi Himmelfartsdag.

Whitsunday and Whitmonday: May 19th (Sunday) and May 20th (Monday)

Pentecost, pinse in Danish, consists of Whitsunday and Whitmonday, the traditional commemorations of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles. Pentecost occurs on the 50th day following Easter.

In Denmark, the Pentecost holidays provide an extended weekend, and Danes frequently take advantage of this by spending time outdoors. 

READ ALSO: Five things to do in Denmark over Pentecost

Christmas Day: December 25th (Wednesday) and Boxing Day: December 26th (Thursday)

Christmas in Denmark is steeped in rich traditions and customs. The pinnacle of the celebration is Christmas Eve. Although the 24th isn’t a public holiday, many people are given or take the day off. It’s also common to work in the morning before driving home for Christmas.

On Christmas Eve, it’s customary for Danish families to come together for the traditional roast duck or pork (flæskesteg) with sautéed red cabbage and potatoes, followed by risalamande, rice pudding with almonds and cherry sauce. Later on Christmas Eve comes the eagerly anticipated moment when families dance around the Christmas tree and children unwrap their gifts.

Christmas Day itself tends to be more of a day of relaxation, while Boxing Day doesn’t hold significant importance in Denmark, despite being a national holiday.

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DENMARK IN 2024

EXPLAINED: What might happen in Danish politics in 2024?

Denmark's big political experiment -- the grand coalition between the Social Democrats, Liberals and Moderates - has survived its first year. We asked Copenhagen University's Kasper Møller Hansen what lies in store for 2024.

Published: 20 December 2023 15:36 CET
Updated: 6 January 2024 08:38 CET
EXPLAINED: What might happen in Danish politics in 2024?

The new government was more or less unchartered territory for Denmark — the first majority government since 1993 and the first across the bloc divide since the 1970s. 

“Everyone is having difficulties trying to understand how they manoeuvre,” said Møller Hansen, Professor of Politics at Copenhagen University. “I think they had an idea that it would be easy. They started out not wanting to engage with other parties. They wanted to just push things through.” 

But this approach led to so much criticism from other parties and from the media that by the time it was negotiating the 2024 budget, the government had reverted to tradition and tried to win broad parliamentary backing, in the end getting every party to sign off on the budget except one.   

“They got so much criticism that now they are trying to find broad coalitions,” Møller Hansen explained. “They seem almost to be acting like a minority government even though they have a majority.” 

He said he expected this approach to continue into 2024, with the government seeking broad political agreements on difficult issues like the carbon tax for agriculture. 

Might the carbon tax on agriculture force out the Liberals? 

At the end of November, the government postponed publication of its proposed carbon tax for agriculture yet again, with the proposal now scheduled to be released in the week starting February 5th. 

Møller Hansen said that the issue, which is crucial for Denmark’s climate goals but likely to hit beef producers, was so difficult for the Liberal Party that it might even ultimately force their new leader Troels Lund Poulsen to take them out of the coalition. 

“The Liberals used to be a farmer’s party — that’s their base, that’s their tradition — and they have a big issue with that,” he said. “They have just been through a change in leadership and I think that one scenario is that they might want to leave the government. It could easily happen within the next year or so.”

If the party opts instead to stay put and help bring in the carbon tax, it risks being punished in regional and municipal elections in 2025, he said.  

“The Liberals used to be a big party locally as well and at the moment if they are tied up in this government coalition and have to swallow this tax on beef production, that might be an issue for all the local Liberal parties.” 

He said the party, which has fallen from 23 percent in the polls to just 8 percent in only three years, was likely in 2023 to start focusing more on “maximising electoral support rather than just trying to maximise their influence”. 

European Elections 

Møller Hansen expects the European elections on June 9th to be largely about climate and AI, but said it would be hard to know for sure until the campaign begins in earnest, which is unlikely to happen until about two weeks before the vote.

The Liberal Party was the biggest party in the 2019 European election, winning 23.5 percent of the vote. It was likely to lose heavily in June, he predicted, as would the Social Liberal and Conservative Parties. The libertarian Liberal Alliance and the left-wing Socialist People’s Party were both likely to gain votes. 

“The Liberals are looking at maybe being cut in half. They have four MEPs now and I think they will only get two. The new Moderate Party will get one MEP, and you will see the other new party, the Danish Democrats, getting one. The Conservatives and the Social Liberals might not even get in [to the European parliament].”

Will any of Denmark’s party leaders be replaced in 2024? 

“I don’t expect any big changes among the party leaders,” he said. “The speculation among journalists is still that Mette Frederiksen might be looking for another job, in terms of an international position. That is a continuous discussion in Denmark. Was she offered the the NATO Secretary General role, or wasn’t she? And so forth.”

Given her dominant position within the Social Democrats, if she did leave, it would cause a major upheaval. There is also speculation, he said, over whether Dan Jørgensen, Minister for Development Cooperation and Global Climate Policy, might leave Danish politics for an international role. 

What will happen to Denmark’s three populist right parties? 

Møller Hansen predicted that the populist right in Denmark would remain weak in 2024 so long as the government managed to keep their core issues, migration and refugees, off the agenda. 

“The populist right is still about the same size — in 2015 it was 21 percent, now it’s maybe 18 percent. It is just divided among three different parties,” he said. “In terms of parliament, that’s definitely a weaker position but their position among voters is still there.” 

The Danish People’s Party, New Right, and Denmark Democrats, he said, were waiting for the government to start relaxing Denmark’s strict asylum and immigration rules.  

“Even though discussion on refugees has almost disappeared in Denmark, it’s still there right under the surface, so as soon as the government becomes somewhat more inclusive in terms of immigrants and refugees, that will just open up the discussion yet again.”

What will happen to immigration and asylum rules? 

This determination not to let immigration and asylum back on the agenda, he said, meant that none of the government parties would be in a hurry to relax Denmark’s tough asylum legislation or even to make changes to the country’s cumbersome work permit and restrictive citizenship rules. 

The Moderate Party supports allowing people brought up in Denmark who lack Danish citizenship to include time spent studying at university towards citizenship. The Social Democrats and Liberals, meanwhile, only want time spent in paid internships as part of education to count. But the issue is not part of the coalition agreement between the three parties, so may not come onto the agenda next year. 

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