The Working Week Around the World

The Monday-to-Friday week feels universal if you have only ever worked inside it, but it is a convention, not a law of nature. Several countries place their weekend on Friday and Saturday, at least one major economy changed its government working week in 2022, and some labour codes leave the weekly rest day to the employer. For anyone scheduling deadlines, running an SLA, or coordinating a cross-border team, knowing which days actually count as working days in the other party's country is the difference between a realistic plan and one that quietly misplaces two days a week.

This guide maps the main patterns: the Saturday-Sunday weekend, the Sunday-Thursday week found across much of the Middle East, countries where the law sets a minimum rest period rather than a fixed weekend, and the United Arab Emirates' 2022 change. It then covers what these patterns mean in practice for international business. Each fact about a country's working week is linked to the government source it comes from in the Sources section at the end.

The most important recent change: the UAE's four-and-a-half-day week

Start here, because a reference written before 2022 will be out of date on this point. Since 1 January 2022 the UAE federal government has worked a four-and-a-half-day week: 7:30 am to 3:30 pm from Monday to Thursday and 7:30 am to 12:00 pm on Fridays, with Saturday and Sunday as the official weekend. The governments of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Ajman, Umm Al Quwain, Ras Al Khaimah and Fujairah adopted a similar system. Sharjah went further: its government works Monday to Thursday, and its official weekend is Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

If you are scheduling against a UAE government counterpart, treat Saturday and Sunday as the weekend and expect a short Friday. The country's business day calculator counts Saturday and Sunday as the weekend.

The Saturday-Sunday weekend

Of the 25 countries this site covers, 21 are counted with a Saturday-Sunday weekend, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan and India. On this site, a business-day count for these countries skips Saturdays, Sundays and the country's public holidays; what a contract means by "business days" depends on its own terms and the law that governs it.

The weekend is the easy part; the public holidays layered on top are not. A "business day" in Germany excludes different dates from a business day in Japan or India, and several countries observe regional holidays that close offices in one state, province or canton but not another. The calculators for the United States and the United Kingdom apply each country's specific holiday set on top of the Saturday-Sunday weekend.

A region-by-region snapshot

The clearest exception to the Saturday-Sunday weekend is the Middle East. Government rules put the weekend on Friday and Saturday, and the working week on Sunday to Thursday, in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan and Iraq, and Egypt's government works Sunday to Thursday as well. Israel is a case of its own: the Bank of Israel's payment system operates Sunday to Friday, and ministries on the five-day week work Sunday to Thursday. North Africa is mixed: Morocco's public administration works Monday to Friday. The UAE government, as above, now takes Saturday and Sunday off. The lesson from the map is simple: check the working week the moment a deadline touches the Middle East.

The Sunday-Thursday week

A band of countries across the Middle East places the weekend on Friday and Saturday, making the working week run Sunday to Thursday. A royal order of 23 June 2013 set the official working days for ministries, government bodies, financial institutions, the central bank, the Capital Market Authority and the stock exchange as Sunday to Thursday, with Friday and Saturday as the weekly holiday; the order cited the Kingdom's economic position and its international and regional obligations. Qatar's 2025 Emiri decision sets the state's working days as Sunday to Thursday, with Friday and Saturday as the weekly holiday, and Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan and Iraq follow the same pattern.

For a business in a Monday-Friday country, the consequence is concrete: a Sunday-Thursday partner is working on your Sunday and resting on your Friday, so the genuinely shared working days drop from five to four. A US company and a Saudi Arabian counterpart overlap on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Thursday is the last day of the Saudi week, but it is still a working day there, so it counts. The two days that drop out are Sunday, a normal Saudi working day that the US side spends at home, and Friday, a US working day that falls in the Saudi weekend. This region has enough specific detail, country by country, to warrant its own treatment; the Sunday-Thursday work week in the Middle East guide covers it in depth.

Israel: more than one working week

Israel does not have one working week. Under paragraph 31.111 of the Civil Service Regulations (the Takshir), read in the copy on the National Insurance Institute's site (page footer dated 29 May 2022), government ministries on the five-day week work Sunday to Thursday and ministries on a six-day week work Sunday to Friday. The Bank of Israel's ZAHAV RTGS calendar for 2026 gives Sunday through Friday as the payment system's operating days, with Fridays and holiday eves as short business days. The Bank's Markets Department list for 2026 leaves Saturdays out of its holiday list, includes two Sundays in it (13 September, the second day of Rosh Hashanah, and 20 September, the eve of Yom Kippur), and says the Bank works only until 13:15 on Fridays. The Israel business day calculator counts the Bank's week, Sunday to Friday with Saturday the only weekly rest day, and treats a short Friday as a full business day. For a deadline that runs on the ministries' Sunday-to-Thursday week, its Working week setting offers Sunday to Thursday (government ministries), which treats Friday as a weekend day as well and keeps the same holidays.

When the law sets a rest period, not a weekend

Not every labour code fixes a weekend. Vietnam's Labour Code caps normal working time at 48 hours a week (8 hours a day, or up to 10 on a weekly schedule), encourages employers to adopt a 40-hour week, and requires at least 24 consecutive hours of weekly rest, which the employer may place on Sunday or on another fixed day set in its work rules. A six-day week is therefore lawful, and the working week of a Vietnamese counterpart is set by its employer rather than by the country alone. The Vietnam business day calculator counts Saturday and Sunday as the weekend, but a counterpart working a six-day week may treat Saturday as a normal working day.

The same is true in the private sector of some countries that have a fixed government weekend. Saudi Arabia's Labour Law makes Friday the weekly rest day for all workers, of at least 24 consecutive hours, and lets the employer, after notifying the labour office, substitute another day for some of its workers. Egypt's Labour Law of 2025 requires weekly rest of at least 24 full hours after at most six consecutive working days, without naming the day. When the schedule matters, confirm the counterpart's own working week rather than assuming it.

Why the patterns differ

Friday is a rest day in every country with a Friday-Saturday weekend covered above, and the weekly rest day that Saudi Arabia's Labour Law names for all workers; the UAE federal government keeps it as a short working day. The decisions that added Saturday give economic reasons in their own words. Saudi Arabia's 2013 royal order cites the Kingdom's economic position and its international and regional obligations; Oman's 2013 statement speaks of continuity with the outside world on economic matters, especially banking; and Kuwait's 2007 decision was meant to ease the problems caused by differing weekends with countries that rest on Saturday and Sunday. In the Bank of Israel's payment-system week, Saturday is the only weekly rest day.

Patterns can change

The work-week map is not fixed. Saudi Arabia set its Sunday-to-Thursday week for the government and financial sector by royal order in 2013; Oman moved its public- and private-sector weekend to Friday and Saturday from 1 May 2013; the UAE federal government moved to its Saturday-Sunday weekend from 1 January 2022; Iraq's 2024 holidays law makes Friday and Saturday weekly holidays while allowing the Council of Ministers to restore work on Saturdays. The practical lesson is to treat the work week as a detail that can change, and to verify it against a current source rather than a years-old assumption.

What this means for international business

The work-week pattern affects every cross-border deadline, and four areas are worth watching in particular.

Scheduling deadlines. A deadline expressed in "business days" means different calendar dates depending on whose working week applies. Seven business days from a Wednesday is the Friday of the following week in a Monday-Friday country, but the Sunday after it for a Sunday-Thursday partner whose weekend falls on your Friday and Saturday. Always agree whose business days govern the deadline, and confirm it in writing, because the same phrase produces two different dates.

SLA and support windows. A service-level agreement promising response "within two business days" is only meaningful once both sides know which days are business days. A support desk in a Sunday-Thursday country is closed on Friday and Saturday; one in a Monday-Friday country is closed on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday is the only day both are closed, and on Sunday and Friday one desk is open while the other is shut, so a support agreement between the two should name the days it covers.

Cross-border deliveries and logistics. Goods-received dates and any handling in the destination country follow that country's working days, not the origin's. A shipment that arrives on a Thursday in a Sunday-Thursday market may wait until Sunday for its next step, a two-day pause that a Monday-Friday shipper may not anticipate. The same applies in reverse for goods arriving into a Monday-Friday country over its weekend.

Banking and payment cutoffs. Several banking weeks follow the local working week. Saudi Arabia's 2013 order put its financial institutions and central bank on the Sunday-to-Thursday week, and Kuwait's central bank banking hall opens Sunday to Thursday. A payment sent Thursday from a Monday-Friday country into a Sunday-Thursday market may not settle until the recipient's banks reopen on Sunday, while one sent from the Gulf on its Sunday arrives on the destination's weekend and may wait until Monday. For time-sensitive payments, count the cutoff against the destination's banking week.

A worked example: a deadline across the gap

Suppose a US supplier agrees to deliver a report "within seven business days" to a client in Saudi Arabia, and both sign on a Wednesday. Whose business days count? Leaving public holidays aside, under the US Monday-Friday week seven business days from Wednesday is the Friday of the following week. Under the Saudi Sunday-Thursday week, the count skips Fridays and Saturdays instead of Saturdays and Sundays, so the seventh business day is the Sunday after that Friday: two calendar days later, and a day the US side does not work. A five-day promise signed on the same Wednesday would have landed on the following Wednesday under both weeks, because each side skips exactly two days along the way. The dates split when the count ends next to a weekend. If the contract does not say which week governs, each side will calculate a different deadline in good faith and then disagree about whether delivery was late.

The fix is procedural, not mathematical. State in the agreement whose business days control, name the country, and ideally attach the holiday calendar that applies. When work genuinely flows both ways, some contracts define a deadline by a fixed calendar date instead of a business-day count, sidestepping the question entirely. Where a business-day count is unavoidable, compute it under the controlling country's week using that country's calculator and share the resulting date explicitly rather than the formula, so both sides are looking at the same day on the calendar rather than the same phrase that resolves differently in each office. The same question decides when a contractor abroad gets paid; our guide to hiring international contractors counts one Net 15 invoice on two countries' calendars.

Counting business days when the weekend differs

Once you know the other party's working week, the arithmetic is the same as any business-day calculation; you just exclude the correct weekend. A business-day count for a Saudi or Egyptian counterpart on this site skips Fridays and Saturdays, while one for a US or German counterpart skips Saturdays and Sundays, and both also drop the relevant public holidays. The country calculators on this site each apply a weekend and holiday set for their market, so selecting the country does the work for you. When a deadline spans two countries with different weekends, the safe approach is to compute it twice, once under each working week, and use whichever your contract specifies as controlling.

One last caution: the weekend is only half of the count. Two countries can share the Monday-Friday week and still resolve the same "ten business days" to different dates because their public holidays fall on different days, and a national holiday in one market is an ordinary working day in the other. The weekend tells you the shape of the week; the holiday calendar tells you which of those weekdays actually count. Get both right, for the country whose week governs, and a cross-border deadline stops being a source of avoidable disputes.

FAQ

Is the Monday-Friday work week universal?

No. Most of the 25 countries on this site are counted with a Saturday-Sunday weekend, but government rules in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan and Iraq set a Friday-Saturday weekend and a Sunday-Thursday week, and some labour codes, such as Vietnam's, require only a weekly rest period and leave the day to the employer. Always confirm the working week of the country and employer you are dealing with rather than assuming Monday-Friday.

Which countries use a Sunday-Thursday work week?

Government rules set a Sunday-Thursday working week with a Friday-Saturday weekend in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan and Iraq, and Egypt's government works Sunday to Thursday too. Israel is not one of them on this site: its calculator counts the Bank of Israel's payment-system week, Sunday to Friday with Saturday the only weekly rest day, although government ministries on the five-day week work Sunday to Thursday (Civil Service Regulations, paragraph 31.111, in the National Insurance Institute's copy dated 29 May 2022). The UAE federal government does not: since 1 January 2022 its weekend has been Saturday and Sunday.

Did the UAE change its work week?

Yes. Since 1 January 2022 the UAE federal government has worked Monday to Thursday from 7:30 am to 3:30 pm and Friday from 7:30 am to 12:00 pm, with Saturday and Sunday as the official weekend. Most emirate governments adopted a similar system, while Sharjah's government works Monday to Thursday with a Friday-to-Sunday weekend.

Why do some countries rest on Friday instead of Sunday?

Friday is the weekly rest day Saudi Arabia's Labour Law names for all workers, and the decisions that added Saturday give economic reasons: Saudi Arabia's 2013 royal order cites the Kingdom's economic position and its international and regional obligations, Oman's 2013 statement continuity with the outside world on economic matters, especially banking, and Kuwait's 2007 decision the problems caused by differing weekends with countries that rest on Saturday and Sunday. In the Bank of Israel's payment-system week, Saturday is the only weekly rest day.

How many working days do a US and a Saudi business actually share?

Four. A Monday-Friday US week and a Sunday-Thursday Saudi week overlap on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. The Saudi side works Sunday while the US side rests, and the US side works Friday while the Saudi side rests, so any cross-border coordination that needs both parties live has a four-day window each week.

Sources