This counts the working days between two dates, excluding weekends and federal public holidays, and reports the calendar days alongside them so the difference is visible.
The working week is the first thing to get right. Since 1 January 2022 the UAE federal week has run Monday to Friday with the weekend on Saturday and Sunday. Before that the weekend was Friday and Saturday and the week ran Sunday to Thursday, so a template written before 2022 may still assume the older pattern and a count spanning the change needs splitting at the boundary. Friday remains a working day but a shortened one, with hours cut around midday for Jumu'ah prayers.
Not every employer follows the federal pattern. Sharjah's government sector moved to a four-day week with a Friday-to-Sunday weekend in 2022, and free zones, schools and multinational offices set their own hours. This calculator counts the federal week; where the party at the other end keeps a different one, adjust by hand.
Three points govern the holidays. All twelve federal public holidays are deducted, and there are no emirate-level ones, so a single national list covers the country. There is no substitute-day mechanism: a holiday falling at the weekend is absorbed and nothing is added back. And where the Cabinet has moved a holiday to the start or end of the week, it is the declared day off that is deducted, not the date it was moved from. The two-hour Ramadan reduction changes the hours in a working day without changing how many there are.
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