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How to add public holidays to a JSM SLA calendar

By Kayabyte · Updated 1 November 2026

Short answer: In Jira Service Management Cloud, go to SLAs in your service space, select the calendar icon at the top right and edit or add a calendar; working days, time slots and holidays are set there, and each SLA goal picks the calendar it runs on. A holiday can repeat on the same date every year or happen once, so holidays that move (Memorial Day, Easter Monday) have to be entered each year (JSDCLOUD-12682), and every service space keeps its own calendars. Daywise: Business Days & Holiday Calendars for Jira, in Atlassian Marketplace review and not yet available, keeps holiday lists by country and region for use in JQL, fields and Automation, but it doesn’t change SLA calendars.

Your SLA clock should stop on days your team isn’t working. Otherwise a ticket that arrives on Friday evening before a public holiday looks like a breach on Tuesday morning. This guide shows how holidays work in SLA calendars and where that gets tedious.

Step by step: create a calendar with holidays

From Atlassian’s SLA calendar article:

  1. Go to SLAs in your service space.
  2. Select the calendar icon at the top right of the page.
  3. Select Add calendar (or open an existing one).
  4. Name the calendar and choose a time zone.
  5. Choose the working days and add time slots for each. You can add several periods per day, for example before and after lunch. New calendars start at 09:00 to 17:00.
  6. Enter the holidays: each one has a date and either repeats on that date every year or happens once.
  7. Select Save.

Calendars then show up in the Goals section when you set up or edit an SLA, so you can run one goal on the office-hours calendar and another on 24/7.

Where it gets tedious

A routine that keeps it manageable

Daywise: Business Days & Holiday Calendars for Jira

Daywise is the app I make for business-day calendars in Jira. I want to be clear about what it does and doesn’t do for SLAs: it doesn’t change Jira Service Management SLA calendars. SLA clocks keep following the calendars in the SLA settings.

What it does is give each team one calendar with a work week, hours, a time zone, public holidays for its country and state or region (for about 200 countries), company closures, short days and extra working days, with a preview of every day off before you save. That makes it a place to read the dates from when you fill the SLA calendars, and it adds business-day logic outside the SLA clock:

Holiday data comes from the open-source date-holidays project. Rules change, so check the preview each year and untick holidays your team works.

Daywise is in Atlassian Marketplace review and not yet available to install.

FAQ

How do I add a holiday to a JSM SLA calendar? In your service space go to SLAs, open the calendar icon at the top right, edit a calendar and enter the holiday with its date, then choose whether it repeats yearly. Save.

Can an SLA calendar repeat a holiday that moves each year? No. A holiday repeats on the same date every year or happens once. Holidays such as US Memorial Day have to be added each year (JSDCLOUD-12682).

Can one SLA use different calendars for different regions? Each SLA goal can use a calendar, so you can create a calendar per region and pick the right one in the goals. The holidays still have to be entered in each calendar.

Does Daywise change my SLA calendars? No. Daywise adds its own JQL functions, fields, automation steps and panel, and leaves JSM SLA calendars as they are.

Do holidays pause SLA timers? An SLA clock follows the calendar its goal uses, so time on a holiday in that calendar isn’t counted.

Jira, Jira Service Management and Atlassian are trademarks of Atlassian. Kayabyte is an independent developer and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Atlassian.