How to Add Holidays to Outlook Calendar

By Lloyd Ingram Updated January 11, 2026

Quick Tips

You can add country- or region-specific holidays to your Calendar. However, this is only a cosmetic change and doesn’t automatically create out-of-office responses.
Holidays are listed as all-day events that you can use for planning. They can’t be changed but you can duplicate them for editing.
Note that some non-working days may not be properly listed as holidays if the original holiday ends up on a weekend.

Microsoft Outlook doesn’t really have a great way to deal with holidays and vacations in general, especially for team-wide applications. However, for personal use, you can add holidays to Outlook calendar and get started from there to make a more customized schedule.

Option 1: Add Holidays to Outlook Calendar on Windows

The stock Outlook app on Windows should be automatically synced with updated holidays, especially if you use a dedicated Microsoft account for it.

Step 1. Open Outlook, then go to Calendar for the account you want to use.

Step 2. Under the calendar selector, click on “Add calendar.”

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Step 3. Go to the “Holidays” tab in the dialog, then search for a country, region, or religious group you want to use the holidays for.

Step 4. Check the checkmark for the holiday group you want to use.

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Option 2: Add Holidays to Outlook Calendar for Mac or Web

If you’re using the Mac client, you might not have the “new Outlook” option and may need to first add the calendar online, which will then be synced to your new client automatically.

Step 1. Go to outlook.com and log in with your Outlook email credentials.

Step 2. Open Outlook Calendar and select “Add calendar.”

Step 3. Find the “Holiday” section, then search for the specific country or religion you want to add the holidays for.

Option 3: Adding a Holiday as Out-of-Office Event

By default, when you add holidays to Outlook Calendar, they will be listed in your calendar as generic events. If shared, you might still be listed as “free” for meetings or work. You can bypass that by duplicating holidays.

Step 1. Go to a specific holiday you want to copy from the Calendar view, right-click on it, and select “Duplicate event.”

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Step 2. For the availability section on the toolbar, put “Out of Office” (or Busy). You can also set the “Response options” to disable needing a response. Click on “Save” when done.

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Alternatively, you can use Outlook’s Automated Replies feature to create a curated list of dates during which contacting you will prompt an automatic response. This needs to be done manually.

If you want to remove the “original” holidays so they don’t show up twice in your Calendar view, you can right-click on a holiday calendar from the list of calendars and select “Remove.”

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If you want a more team-wide solution, Microsoft has limited built-in tools. You can technically use SharePoint to create a list of events that will then be referenced as a calendar that you can distribute to the team (and which is only usable in Outlook or SharePoint).

Otherwise, you can try using an automation app like Zapier that can convert Google or other calendars into similar Outlook events and block it in the app. However, this can port all other events, not just holidays.