Bank holidays are the single biggest source of late-delivery complaints we see, year after year. The pattern is the same: senders forget that Monday is a non-working day, book Express on the Friday expecting Monday delivery, and end up explaining the gap to a frustrated customer.
2026 has the usual eight bank holidays in England and Wales (with two additional ones in Scotland and one in Northern Ireland). The ones to plan around are the May early-May bank holiday (Mon 4 May), Spring (Mon 25 May), Summer (Mon 31 Aug) and the festive bunching at year-end.
Practical cut-offs to hit pre-bank-holiday: Standard 48 → book by 12:00 three working days prior; Express → book by 14:00 the working day before; Same-day → book before 14:00 on the working day before (no same-day operates on the holiday itself).
Regional differences matter. Scotland has St Andrew's Day (Mon 30 Nov) and a different January 2nd holiday. Northern Ireland adds St Patrick's Day (Tue 17 Mar) and Battle of the Boyne (Mon 13 Jul). If you're shipping into these regions, factor it in.
We publish a live cut-off calendar inside the MOVANA dashboard, and email all account holders the week before each bank holiday with the exact deadlines for that period. Bookmark it — it'll save you a lot of awkward customer-service replies.