Is it on July 1 or in late June?

The day itself is July 1, but the authorised closure usually falls on a nearby date, and in recent years that has been the preceding Friday. Bank Employee Day is July 1; the Aniversario de la Revolución de 1871, the national holiday it is announced with, is June 30.

Why does the date move?

The Junta Monetaria authorises the closure fresh each year rather than fixing it to the calendar, and the authorised date has usually landed next to the June 30 national holiday. No source states why July 1 was chosen as the day in the first place.

Is the 1957 rule still in force?

Yes, and it is still being amended. By Resolution JM-50-2020 of 22 April 2020 the Junta Monetaria modified article 1 of the reglamento along with that year's bank holiday calendar.

Is this the same as Argentina's Día del Bancario?

No. Argentina's falls on November 6 and marks the 1924 constitution of the Asociación Bancaria, instituted by article 50 of that sector's collective agreement.

Bank Employee Day

Next celebratedThursday, July 1, 2027

Guatemala's banks and exchange houses close for their own staff on Bank Employee Day, and in ten of the eleven years on record the closure did not fall on July 1. Staff have taken it on June 30, on July 2, once as late as July 4.

See how to celebrate

Countdown to the day

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Last updated September 6, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEJuly 1

OBSERVED INGuatemala

CATEGORYCareers

SUBCATEGORYWorkplace Wellness

ORIGIN

Government Proclamation

FOUNDING ENTITY

Junta Monetaria de Guatemala

FIRST OBSERVED

1957

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

A holiday that lives inside a closure schedule.

Guatemala's Junta Monetaria issued Resolution No. 2079 on 15 May 1957, creating the standing rulebook on bank holidays that the Superintendencia de Bancos has cited for every closure since. The Congress of Guatemala names that resolution as the instrument that established July 1 as Día del Empleado Bancario.

Read the SIB closure noticevia sib.gob.gt

INTRO

A regulator moves this holiday almost every year

Guatemala's banking regulator puts the awkward part in brackets. When the Superintendencia de Bancos announces the closure for Bank Employee Day, its notice names the holiday and then adds a parenthesis: corresponde al 1 de julio. It belongs to July 1, and the banks are shutting on something else.

That parenthesis appears in five of the nine June closure notices posted on the Superintendencia's own site since 2015. It is the supervisor of Guatemala's financial system conceding, in its own press release, that the day off and the day have come apart again.

They come apart most years. In ten of the eleven years traceable through those notices and the reporting around them, the Junta Monetaria authorised the closure for a date that was not July 1. Bank staff have taken it on June 30, on July 2, and once as late as July 4.

ORIGINS

Bank Employee Day history

INTRODUCTION

Guatemala's first bank was built out of confiscated church property, and it did not last three years.

The money came from Presidential Decree 104 of 1873, which ordered the nationalisation and sale of property taken from the Catholic Church. The proceeds were to capitalise a national bank. The statutes of the Banco Nacional de Guatemala were made official on 23 March 1874.

CHAPTER 01

The two million pesos that never arrived

The first estimate put the fund at two million pesos. It never got there. The study of the bank's notes records that few buildings were actually confiscated and fewer rural estates still, because those had been stripped from the Church decades earlier, during the first liberal period between 1829 and 1838.

The bank opened in the Casa de La Moneda building, on ground now occupied partly by the Parque Centenario. The building was photographed in 1875 by Eadweard J. Muybridge.

By then the finances were already going. A presidential accord of 24 November 1876 accepted the institution's bankruptcy and ordered a slow, orderly wind-down.

CHAPTER 02

A system rebuilt, then given a calendar

The architecture Guatemalan bankers work inside today is much younger. It came out of the second total banking reform, of 1945 and 1946, which followed the October Revolution of 1944.

Eleven years after that reform, the Junta Monetaria turned to the mundane question of when banks are allowed to shut. On 15 May 1957 it issued Resolution No. 2079, the Reglamento de Asuetos de las Instituciones Bancarias que operan en la República.

Whether that resolution also named July 1 as the bank workers' own day is a claim the Congress of Guatemala publishes each July, in wording it has reused for years. What the regulation certainly built is the machinery: its article 8 is still the authority the Superintendencia cites, alongside a government accord of 6 October 1980, every time it tells the country the banks are closing.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why Bank Employee Day Matters

Discretion

The Junta Monetaria authorises the banks to close. It does not order them to.

The Junta Monetaria authorises supervised entities to close; it does not require them to. Every notice repeats that it remains at each entity's discretion to serve the public through an agency, a special window or something similar. A reader who assumes the shutters are down everywhere has misread the instrument.

Neighbours

It arrives attached to another holiday

The Superintendencia announces this closure in the same notice as the one for the Aniversario de la Revolución de 1871, Guatemala's June 30 national holiday. That is why the two reach the public as a single long weekend, and why headlines about bank closures rarely mention one without the other.

Notice

The calendar is not the operative answer

Because the authorised date shifts, the only reliable source for a given year is the Superintendencia's June communiqué, which also publishes the list of branches keeping special service through the closure. Businesses that schedule payments off a printed calendar are working from the wrong document.

BY THE NUMBERS

Bank Employee Day by the Numbers

19: Entities in the banking system, 2025
Q642,350M: Bank system assets, December 2025
2,787: Bank branches nationwide, 2025
89.7%: Access points that are banking agents
263: Branches open through the 2026 closure

MYTH VS FACT

Common Misconceptions

The myth

Guatemala's first bank opened in 1871.

The truth

1871 is the year of the Liberal Revolution whose expropriations paid for the bank, not the year the bank existed. The Banco Nacional de Guatemala's statutes were made official on 23 March 1874. The 1871 version is repeated by the Congress of Guatemala, in identically worded notices published in 2022 and 2025, and by the state newspaper Diario de Centro América.

The myth

It is a national holiday, so the whole country gets the day off.

The truth

It is a sector closure for the entities the Superintendencia de Bancos supervises: banks and their branches, financial companies, insurers, warehousing firms, exchange houses and microfinance entities. The rest of Guatemala works. Even inside the sector the closure is partial, and 263 branches and special windows stayed open through the 2026 closure.

The myth

The date never actually lands on July 1.

The truth

It did in 2022. July 1 fell on a Friday that year, and the Junta Monetaria authorised the closure for the day itself. The other holiday moved instead: the June 30 closure went to Monday, July 4, and bank staff got four consecutive days.

GET INVOLVED

How to Observe Bank Employee Day

Check the notice before you plan a payment

Guatemala's Superintendencia de Bancos publishes its closure notice in the last days of June, naming the exact authorised dates. It is the only document that settles the question for a given year, and it can land as little as a day ahead.

FIND

Find the branch that is staying open

The same notice points to the list of agencies and special windows keeping service through the closure. In 2026 those were concentrated in shopping centres, so an errand is often still possible.

THANK

Thank the person at the window

The day exists to mark the work of the people handling deposits, withdrawals, account openings and lending across the country. Saying so to a teller costs nothing and is closer to the point than a card.

READ

Read what the regulator actually publishes

The Superintendencia's report to the Junta Monetaria is public and readable, and it sets out how many entities the country supervises and how people reach them. It is a better picture of Guatemalan banking than any summary of it.

LEARN

Learn the difference between the two June dates

Bank Employee Day and the Aniversario de la Revolución de 1871 arrive together and are constantly confused. Knowing which one is the national holiday and which is the sector closure is genuinely useful in Guatemala in late June.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know Bank Employee Day?

1 / 8

Which body authorises the bank closure for Bank Employee Day each year?

Answer

No. It is a closure for the financial entities the Superintendencia de Bancos supervises, authorised each year by the Junta Monetaria, and it carries no general day off.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

10sources

5primary records

8independently dated

Primary records

Superintendencia de Bancos de Guatemala2025-06-26

Comunicado de Prensa: Asuetos, Aniversario de la Revolución de 1871 y Día del Empleado Bancario

The supervisor's own notice authorising the 2025 bank closure for Friday June 27 for Día del Empleado Bancario and Monday June 30 for the Revolution anniversary, printing the standing legal basis: article 8 of the Reglamento de Asuetos, Junta Monetaria Resolution 2079 of 15 May 1957, and the government accord of 6 October 1980.

View source

Superintendencia de Bancos de Guatemala2019-06-27

Junta Monetaria autoriza asueto bancario

The 2019 authorisation, moving the Revolution closure to Monday July 1 and the Día del Empleado Bancario closure to Tuesday July 2, and carrying the parenthesis in which the regulator notes the day itself belongs to July 1.

View source

Superintendencia de Bancos de Guatemala2025-12

Informe del Superintendente de Bancos ante la Honorable Junta Monetaria, a diciembre de 2025

The supervisor's report to the Junta Monetaria, giving 87 supervised entities in total, a banking system of 19 entities holding 94.1 percent of supervised assets, and a national network of 68,078 access points split between 2,787 branches, 61,076 banking-agent establishments and 4,215 ATMs.

View source

Congreso de la República de Guatemala2025-07-01

Congreso felicita a los empleados bancarios en su día

The legislature's own account of the day, naming Junta Monetaria Resolution 2079 of Acta 700, dated 15 May 1957, as the instrument that established it, and repeating the 1871 dating of Guatemala's first bank.

View source

Congreso de la República de Guatemala2022-07-01

Congreso felicita a los empleados bancarios en su día (2022)

The same congratulatory item three years earlier in identical wording, recording that in 2022 bank staff took the closure on Friday July 1 with a further closure on Monday July 4.

View source

Additional coverage

Revista CUSAM

Primeros billetes de banco en Guatemala: Banco Nacional de Guatemala (1874-1876)

Edgar Daniel Quisquinay Rojas on Guatemala's first bank: statutes officialised 23 March 1874, capital drawn from church property nationalised under Presidential Decree 104 of 1873, the two-million-peso estimate the fund never reached, the Casa de La Moneda premises photographed by Eadweard J. Muybridge in 1875, and the presidential accord accepting bankruptcy on 24 November 1876.

View source

La Hora2026-06-25

Bancos abiertos en el asueto: 263 agencias atenderán del 26 al 29 de junio en Guatemala

Reports that 263 branches and special windows stayed open through the 2026 closure, and confirms that the Día del Empleado Bancario closure that year fell on June 26.

View source

Academia de Geografía e Historia de Guatemala

Tres reformas de la banca de Guatemala (1926, 1946 y 2002)

José Molina Calderón on Guatemala's three total banking reforms, including the 1945-46 reform that followed the October Revolution of 1944 and built the country's modern banking architecture.

View source

Agencia Guatemalteca de Noticias2026-06-22

Entidades bancarias estarán cerradas el viernes 26 y el lunes 29 de junio de 2026

The state news agency on the 2026 closure dates, noting that the day is officially each July 1 while financial entities suspend in-person service under Junta Monetaria and Superintendencia provisions.

View source

La Nación2024-11-06

Día del Bancario en la Argentina: por qué se celebra hoy

Argentina's separate November 6 observance, marking the 1924 constitution of the Asociación Bancaria and instituted by article 50 of the sector's collective agreement.

View source

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