Calendar Maker

Make a printable calendar with your events, colors and U.S. federal holidays

Pick a year and month, select a date, type an event name, and it shows up in that day's box as a colored bar. U.S. federal holidays for 2026 and 2027 are marked in red, including the observed weekday when a holiday lands on a weekend. When the calendar looks right, save it as an image (PNG), an Excel file (.xlsx), or print it or save it as a PDF.

Switch to the year view to put all 12 months on one page, which works as a calendar template for 2027. Events are sorted into 8 color categories that you can rename and recolor, and you can choose a theme color for the header band and add one photo per month. There is no sign-up. What you type and the photos you add stay in this browser and are not sent to a server.

When it helps to build your own calendar

A phone calendar is great for reminders, but it is hard to pin up, hand to someone, or look at a whole month in one glance. A printable page or a single file is the better fit in cases like these.

• A family calendar for the fridge: give each person a color category (orange for Mom, blue for soccer practice) and name it so the legend prints with those names. A Letter printout shows at a glance who is busy when.
• A monthly schedule for a team, class or club: add the dates, save an image for the group chat, or save a PDF to attach to an email.
• Shift rotations, exam weeks and trips: set an end date and a multi-day event runs across the boxes as one bar. The Excel file can be edited further and shared with coworkers.
• A yearly calendar or a photo calendar: save all 12 months of 2027 on one page, or add a photo to each month and print your own gift calendar.

How to make the calendar

1. Choose a month: use the year box, the month list and the previous and next buttons. The month that contains today opens first, and the range is 1900 to 2100.
2. Add events: select a date and the date in the "New event" form changes to that day. Type a name, choose a time, an end date, a note and a color category, then press "Add event". You can add several events on the same day.
3. Edit or delete: select a date to see every event of that day in a list. "Edit" loads the event back into the form, and "Delete" asks you to confirm.
4. Customize: set the calendar title, whether the week starts on Sunday or Monday, the theme color, a photo and whether holidays are shown. In "Rename and recolor categories", the names you give appear in the legend and in the Excel category column.
5. Save: choose landscape or portrait, then save as an image, an Excel file, or print or save a PDF. In the year view all 12 months are saved together.

If you are new to it, press "Add sample events" to see how a month looks, then "Remove samples" to delete only the samples before you start.

Image, Excel or PDF: which to save

All three formats carry the same title, colors and holidays as the calendar on screen. Pick the one that fits how you will use it.

The Excel file is set to print one page wide on Letter paper, in the orientation you chose, and the holiday name appears in small red text next to the date. Because the image uses A4 proportions, printing it on Letter paper can leave a little extra white margin. The square marker in an event cell is the category color, so a black-and-white printout still works: the category name is in the list below the grid.

U.S. federal holidays in 2026 and 2027

The holidays marked on the calendar are the federal holidays on the OPM schedule, which follows 5 U.S.C. 6103. They are the days federal employees are off, not a list of every day banks, schools, states or private employers close. When a holiday falls on a Saturday or Sunday, the table shows the weekday that is observed.

The holiday data has 11 dates in 2026 and 12 in 2027, and every one of them falls on a weekday (Monday to Friday). The 2027 count includes Friday, December 31, 2027, the observed day for New Year's Day 2028. Counting Saturdays and Sundays as days off, there are 8 breaks of three or more days in a row in 2026 and 9 in 2027 (not counting the weekend that follows December 31, 2027). Every one of them is exactly three days long, a holiday Friday or Monday joined to a weekend.

When a holiday lands on a weekend: observed dates

Federal holidays have fixed dates in law, but when one falls on a weekend, most federal employees get a nearby weekday off instead. The calendar marks that observed weekday, not the weekend day itself. For example, July 4, 2026 is a Saturday, so the red mark is on Friday, July 3.

Under 5 U.S.C. 6103(b)(2), an employee whose basic workweek is not Monday to Friday and whose regular day off lands on a holiday is given the workday before that day off instead. These observed dates apply to federal employees for pay and leave. Private employers, banks, schools and state governments follow their own calendars, so add those days as events.

Five rows or six: how many weeks a month needs

A month is drawn in 4 to 6 rows, one row per week. With a Sunday start, a 31-day month needs 6 rows if it begins on a Friday or Saturday, and a 30-day month needs 6 rows if it begins on a Saturday. With a Monday start, 31-day months need 6 rows when they begin on a Saturday or Sunday and 30-day months when they begin on a Sunday. A February with 28 days takes just 4 rows when it begins on the first day of the week. More rows mean shorter boxes, so a busy month may not show every event in the grid (each box shows two or three and "+n more", and the full list opens when you select the date).

Sunday is the default start here. Changing the start day never moves an event to a different date. The ISO 8601 standard treats Monday as the first day of the week.

Using color categories and theme colors well

• One color, one meaning: name the 8 categories (orange, blue, green, pink, purple, gray, yellow, teal) things like Family, Work or Fitness. The names appear in the legend, the event list and the Excel category column, and changing a color changes every event in that category.
• Text color is automatic: the text on a bar is white or near-black, whichever has the higher WCAG contrast ratio against the bar color. Light yellow gets dark text and dark navy gets white text.
• Do not rely on color alone: for people with color vision differences, and for black-and-white printing, put who or what the event is for in its name. WCAG 1.4.1 says color should not be the only way to tell things apart.
• Theme color: it is used for the weekday band, the large month number and today's mark. Choose one of six or pick any color with "Custom", and the weekday text switches between white and dark to stay readable.
• Weekends and holidays: Saturdays and Sundays keep the normal text color. Only holiday dates are red, so a red date on a weekday is a federal holiday.

Common mix-ups

• Years after 2027: holiday data is included for 2026 and 2027 only. Other years show no holiday marks, so add the dates you need as events. A holiday that a president adds by executive order is not marked until it is in the data.
• Looking for July 4 on the right day: when July 4 falls on a weekend the red mark is on the observed Friday or Monday. The weekend date itself is not marked.
• A photo that looks cropped: the photo fills its frame and is cropped around the center. Landscape calendars have a tall photo frame and portrait calendars a wide one, so a photo in the matching orientation loses less.
• A printout that comes out small: in the print dialog set scale to Default or "Fit to page", choose the same orientation you picked here, and turn off headers and footers so the web address and date are not printed.
• Events that seem to disappear: clearing site data, using a private window or switching browsers hides what was saved. Save a copy as Excel as well for any calendar you want to keep.

Limits and what this tool does not do

• There are no reminders, no repeating events and no syncing between devices. A weekly event has to be added on each date.
• Lunar dates and religious holidays are not shown, and neither are state, local or school holidays. Add those as events.
• You cannot load an exported image, Excel file or PDF back in to keep editing. To continue, reopen this page in the same browser.
• Photos are stored in a reduced size in this browser. If storage runs short, the photo is used on this screen only and is not saved.

Holiday data and rules were checked on October 17, 2026. Federal holidays and observed dates describe federal employment, and your employer or school may follow a different calendar.

Sources

• 01U.S. Office of Personnel Management: Federal Holidays2026 and 2027 dates with observed days, and the Saturday and Sunday rules (5 U.S.C. 6103(b); Executive Order 11582, section 3(a)). Opened October 17, 2026.
• 02U.S. Government Publishing Office: 5 U.S.C. 6103, HolidaysThe 11 legal public holidays in subsection (a); subsection (b) on Saturday holidays and non-standard workweeks. Opened October 17, 2026.
• 03ISO 8601-1:2019 Date and time — Representations for information interchange — Part 13.1.2.16 calendar week: seven days that begin on Monday and end on Sunday
• 04ISO 216:2007 Writing paper and certain classes of printed matterA4 is 210 × 297 mm
• 05W3C: Understanding WCAG 2.2, 1.4.1 Use of Color
• 06W3C: WCAG 2.2 definition of contrast ratio
• 07Ecma International: ECMA-376 Office Open XMLThe .xlsx file format
• 08WHATWG HTML: Web storageBrowser storage

Frequently asked questions

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