Election Day 2026: Tuesday, November 3

Election Days from 2026 to 2036

The pattern is the same as for any weekday rule: the date steps back one or two days each cycle and jumps forward when the first Monday returns to the top of the month. Many states hold their own elections on the same day to save costs, and some hold local elections in odd years, which are not covered by the federal statute. The mini-tool under the summary gives the date for any federal election year.

Where the date comes from

In the early decades of the republic, states chose presidential electors on different days over a span of several weeks. An act of 1845 set one day for the whole country, the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November, and in 1872 Congress applied the same day to elections for the House. The rule now sits in section 7 of title 2 of the US Code; senators have been elected on the same day since direct election began under the Seventeenth Amendment. Changing the date would take an act of Congress.

The USAGov Election Day page gives the official date together with links to state election offices, which set registration deadlines, polling hours and the rules for early and absentee voting. Those rules differ widely, so this page does not list them.

Open as usual: offices, banks, markets and mail

Election Day has never been added to the list of federal holidays, despite regular proposals. Federal offices open, the Federal Reserve Banks process payments, the New York Stock Exchange trades normal hours and post offices deliver and collect mail. Some states and cities close their own offices or schools, often because schools serve as polling places. The checker below confirms the national picture for November 3, 2026.

A week later comes Veterans Day, which is a federal holiday; the Veterans Day page shows what closes then. In 2028 the two dates are only four days apart, Tuesday, November 7 and Friday, November 10, the observed day of a Veterans Day that falls on Saturday.

Counting down to results and transition dates

The countdown on this page stops at the start of Election Day in your time zone, not at poll closing, which varies from state to state and across time zones. After a presidential election, later steps follow fixed dates set by federal law: the meeting of electors in December, the counting of electoral votes in Congress on January 6 and the inauguration on January 20. For a count of working days between any of these dates, use the business days counter.