The 2026 bank holiday dates
Easter, early May, late May and the end of August. Easter comes first, over Good Friday on 3 April and Easter Monday on 6 April. The early May holiday falls on Monday 4 May, the spring one on Monday 25 May, and the summer one on Monday 31 August.
We watch a few days either side of each: 27 March to 7 April, 30 April to 5 May, 21 to 26 May, and 27 August to 1 September. Only Easter carries two bank holidays inside a single window, so it gets the longest run of the four. Sales themselves usually end at midnight on the Monday, and often a day or two later online. For that reason the windows sit wider than the holidays, catching offers that open on the Thursday or run to the Wednesday.
The gaps are uneven, and that's the useful part
Easter, early May and the spring Monday all fall inside 8 weeks of each other. Then nothing until 31 August. So a bank holiday is a short wait in April and a long one in June. Holding out for the next one is a different decision depending on where you're standing.
Which retailers run bank holiday sales?
Showroom chains treat them as proper trading weekends. Most direct brands will run something too. You'll see who's running what this weekend in the list above, with a code count against each name.
Emma bank holiday 2026 codes? When they exist, they're in those cards and on Emma's promo page too.
Why doesn't a long weekend move the price?
A 3 day weekend is too short to build a new promotion around. Setting one up means new pricing, new adverts, stock set aside for it and staff briefed on it. Nobody does all that for 72 hours of trading. So what usually reaches you is the promotion already running, given a bank holiday name and a fresh banner.
That's not a dig at the retailers, and your price isn't a bad one for it. It does mean the date hardly makes any difference to what you pay. Banners are cheap to change and prices are not, and that's most of what a long weekend offer is.
The showroom floor is the exception
Long weekends bring people through the door. Ex-display models and odd clearance pieces get moved out to make room for the new season. Those are priced to clear floor space, which is why they never show up in an online code. Turning up in person's the only way you'll see them.
A floor model's been sat on by strangers for months, so ask how long it's been out and check the guarantee still applies. Any saving should reflect that wear, and how keen the shop is to clear the space. One catch: ex-display stock is usually sold as seen, so the trial you'd get on a boxed mattress may not come with it.
Is a bank holiday worth waiting for?
Only if your wait's short. Check your own calendar before any retailer's advert. In April and May the next one's a few weeks away, so holding on costs you little. After the spring Monday there's nothing until the end of August, and nobody should sleep badly for 3 months to reach it.
August's the one that puts a timing decision in front of you. From the summer holiday on 31 August, Black Friday is about three months off, so it's your last long weekend where waiting is still a live option. After that you're gambling the whole autumn on a bed you already think is failing.
How to judge a long weekend offer
Compare it against the same retailer's price the week before. The old figure on the ticket isn't evidence. Put a bank holiday banner over an offer that's been running since the start of the month and the banner is all that's new. You'll only tell the two apart by having looked earlier.
Be wary of "up to" wording in particular. It's been tested by the advertising regulator already: in 2024 the ASA upheld all three issues it looked into over Origin Sleep's advertising, one of them its savings claims, which included "Up to 45% off". That kind of figure points at whichever item in the range is cut hardest, which is rarely the one you came for.
Direct brands need the same caveat in every window: the Which? price check found the same pattern there, mattresses sitting at a sale price week after week. A bank holiday changes nothing about a price that was never going back up. Our promo codes pages list whatever they have running today.
What is a long weekend worth?
The one thing a long weekend is good for is lying on beds in a showroom. You don't need an appointment and you don't need to buy anything. Showrooms are open, you've got a spare day, and 20 minutes on three beds teaches you more about firmness than a fortnight of reading. Lie in your usual sleeping position, instead of sitting on the edge like almost everyone does.
Then buy when the price is right, whether that's on the Monday or in November. Use the sales calendar to see where the next window falls. Our picks are made without reference to any of it.
What's behind this page
Our price log covers every mattress on the site, so a drop on this page means the latest price has fallen below a month of our own logged prices. Holiday dates are GOV.UK's, the windows are ours, and the calendar page's method note has the rest.
Sources
- GOV.UK, UK bank holidays, for the 2026 Easter, May and August dates. https://www.gov.uk/bank-holidays
- ASA, its 2024 ruling against Origin Sleep on "up to" savings wording. https://www.asa.org.uk/rulings/origin-sleep-uk-ltd-a24-1253221-origin-sleep-uk-ltd.html
- Which?, February 2024 review of continuous mattress discounting. https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/which-urges-popular-mattress-companies-to-play-by-the-rules-aeIV45u7pHws
