Long Weekend Planner — turn a few leave days into the longest possible breaks
Most people book leave one day at a time and never notice that a single Friday in April buys them nine consecutive days off. This finds those days for you.
The calendar arithmetic nobody does
Public holidays fall on different weekdays each year, and the pattern that turns a modest leave allowance into a long break is not obvious from looking at a calendar. A holiday landing on a Tuesday means a single Monday off yields four consecutive days; two holidays a week apart can mean nine days off for three days of leave. Working that out by hand, across a whole year, is tedious enough that almost nobody does it — so leave gets booked reactively and the good combinations are missed.
The optimiser does the search. You tell it how many leave days you have and it returns the best ways to spend them.
What the annual leave planner does
One calculation, presented four ways.
- Strategies ranked by efficiency. The optimiser returns up to three strategies for your year and country, ranked by days off per leave day and tie-broken by total days off. Anything that would need more leave than you actually have is excluded, so every suggestion is bookable.
- Named plans rather than dates. Each strategy gets a descriptive name from its main holiday and month — a Christmas mega-break, a spring bridge — which makes it far easier to compare options than reading two lists of dates.
- Every long weekend in the year. Separately from the optimiser, the app lists the long weekends your country's calendar produces on its own, so you can see the free ones before spending any leave at all.
- Forty countries. Holiday calendars for forty countries are bundled, which matters for remote workers, people who split the year across two places, and anyone planning to meet family in another country.
- Country comparison. Put two countries side by side. If you have the choice of where to take leave — or you are coordinating with someone abroad — the overlap is the useful part.
- Book it and share it. A chosen plan can be added to your calendar, with local reminders, and shared as a plan card — which is how it usually gets agreed with a partner or a team.
Bundled data, no account
Holiday calendars for all forty countries ship inside the app, so the optimiser runs with no connection and no account. Nothing about your leave allowance or your plans is uploaded anywhere, which matters more than it sounds — your leave plan is information about when your home will be empty.
It is also deliberately not a leave-management system. It does not connect to your employer's HR platform, track your remaining balance across the year, or require anyone else to install it. It answers one question well and gets out of the way.
Who gets the most from it
Anyone with a fixed annual allowance and the freedom to choose when to take it. The gain is largest at the start of a leave year, when you can plan the whole thing before colleagues book the same weeks.
Couples and families coordinating two allowances, where the overlap is the constraint. People working remotely across countries, who can pick which country's holiday calendar to exploit. And anyone who has looked at their remaining leave in November and realised they left the good combinations on the table.
Data and privacy
Public holiday dates are bundled per country and per year. Some holidays move — those set by lunar calendars or by government announcement — so confirm anything unusual against your national calendar before booking flights. Regional holidays that apply only to part of a country may not be represented.
Nothing is uploaded and there is no account. The app is free and ad-supported, with an optional purchase to remove ads.
Frequently asked questions
How does the optimiser decide what to suggest? It ranks candidate strategies by days off per leave day, tie-broken by total days off, and excludes anything needing more leave than you actually have — so every suggestion is bookable.
How many countries are supported? Forty, with their holiday calendars bundled inside the app.
Can I compare two countries? Yes. A compare screen puts two countries' calendars side by side — useful when you can choose where to take leave, or are coordinating with someone abroad.
Can it add the plan to my calendar? Yes, and it can produce a shareable plan card and set local reminders.
Does it need an internet connection? No. The holiday data ships with the app and the optimiser runs on the device.