How USPS Pay Periods Work
Every USPS pay period runs exactly two weeks, Saturday through Friday, and your paycheck lands on the Friday after the period closes — so the money you earn in, say, PP16 (July 11–24) arrives July 31. That one-week lag trips up nearly every new hire: your first check reflects your first pay period, not your first week. If you’re new, our first 90 days guide covers what else to expect.
Why 2026 Has 27 Pay Periods
Because biweekly cycles do not align perfectly with a calendar year, 27 USPS paydays fall in 2026. Postal Bulletin 22692 separately states that the 2026 leave year contains 26 full pay periods: PP03-2026 through PP01-2027, January 10, 2026 through January 8, 2027. Fixed-dollar deductions tied to each paycheck can therefore occur 27 times during calendar year 2026. If you are pacing TSP contributions to the $24,500 regular limit, use the 27 checks you will actually receive so you do not reach the limit before the final matching periods.
Leave Year vs. Calendar Year
The leave year doesn’t match the calendar year, and this is the detail that catches people at carryover time. The 2026 leave year began January 10, 2026 (the start of PP03) and runs through early January 2027. Your annual leave carryover cap — 520 hours for bargaining unit employees under the current MOU, 640 for EAS — is enforced at the end of the leave year, not on December 31. Use the leave calculator to see whether your balance will clear the cap. Tax withholding, on the other hand, follows the calendar year: your W-2 reflects checks paid in 2026, regardless of when the hours were worked. Our W-2 and taxes guide explains why your W-2 box 1 never matches your annual salary.
Holidays and Your Check
The table above maps each of the ten federal holidays (plus observed dates) to its pay period. If you work a holiday, you earn holiday worked pay — effectively double time — on top of your regular holiday leave pay. That’s one of the best-paying days on the postal calendar, and you can model exactly what it adds with the take-home pay calculator. Note that when a holiday falls on your non-scheduled day or a Sunday, the observed date shifts, which changes which pay period it lands in — the table above already accounts for that.
Verify Against Official Sources
Pay dates occasionally shift when a payday collides with a bank holiday, and your local finance office is the final authority. This calendar matches the published 2026 schedule; for the deeper story on how the 27-period year affects your annual pay, see our full 2026 pay period calendar guide.