2026 All Saints' Day

All Saints' Day, La Toussaint, on November 1 is the Catholic feast honouring all the saints and a public holiday in France. Although the Church remembers the dead on All Souls' Day, November 2, the French custom is to visit family graves on Toussaint itself, so cemeteries fill with people cleaning headstones and leaving pots of chrysanthemums — the flower of mourning in France, sold by the millions in the preceding week. The holiday sits in the middle of the vacances de la Toussaint, a two-week school break that usually starts in the second half of October, so families travel and hotels and trains are busy across the country. Shops and most businesses close on November 1, and when it falls next to a weekend many workers make a bridge day, while November 2 is a normal working day. Florists and cemetery car parks are at their busiest on the morning of the 1st. This countdown ticks to midnight Central European Time in Paris on November 1.