20 business days from today in Singapore

A Sunday holiday takes the next day with it

Section 4(1) of the Holidays Act 1998 declares the days specified in its Schedule to be public holidays in Singapore. Section 4(2) then deals with the weekend: if any day specified in the Schedule falls on a Sunday, the day next following not being itself a public holiday is declared a public holiday. The subsection names Sunday and no other day of the week.

For a working-day count that separates a holiday that costs nothing from one that costs a day. A Schedule day on a Saturday removes no working day from a Monday to Friday count. A Schedule day on a Sunday removes the Monday after it, or the Tuesday where that Monday is itself a public holiday. Counted from a weekday, twenty working days always spans at least four Sundays, so a four-week window has four chances to meet the rule where a one-week window has one.

Twenty working days from the reference date

Counted from a weekday, twenty working days crosses four weekends and, with no public holiday in the window, ends on the same weekday four weeks later.

Public holidays inside this four-week window

A twenty-day court period is a different count

The Rules of Court 2021 would treat the same number differently. Order 3 rule 3(6) excludes non-court days only if the period in question is 6 days or less, and the Rules define a non-court day as a Saturday, Sunday or public holiday. At twenty days nothing is excluded: every day counts, and rule 3(7) only moves an expiry that falls on a non-court day to the next day that is not one. A twenty-day period under the Rules is therefore shorter on the calendar than the twenty working days counted above.

What a twenty-working-day clause should say

A contract may count differently from this page, so the clause has to say how.

• Define the working day. Days on which a party's Singapore office is open and days that are not public holidays under the Holidays Act 1998 are different sets: section 6 of the Act leaves an employer free to agree another holiday with its employees in substitution for a public holiday.
• Say whether a Monday counts as a working day when it is a public holiday only because the holiday itself fell on a Sunday. Under section 4(2) it is a public holiday like any other.
• Say whether the count follows days declared after the contract was signed. Section 5 holidays are declared for a particular year, by notification in the Gazette.
• Say whether a counterparty outside Singapore counts on the Singapore list or on its own.

Where this page's law and dates come from

Each link below was opened on September 7, 2026 and checked against the wording quoted above it. Where a period on this page is trade practice rather than legislation, the text says so in those words instead of reaching for a citation.