SEPA Date Calculator TARGET & deadlines
Enter a due date, get every SEPA deadline that follows from it — settlement, D-1 presentation, pre-notification, returns, refunds — and the TARGET closing days of any year.
When does a SEPA direct debit settle, and what are the TARGET closing days?
A SEPA direct debit settles on its Due Date when that day is an Inter-PSP Business Day — a day TARGET is open. When the Due Date falls on a weekend or a TARGET closing day, the 2025 SDD Core Rulebook (EPC016-06) moves settlement to the next Inter-PSP Business Day; this is not an error, it is what the rulebook prescribes. TARGET closes on exactly six days a year — 1 January, Good Friday, Easter Monday, 1 May, 25 December and 26 December — plus every Saturday and Sunday, a calendar the European Central Bank published on 14 December 2000 and which applies "from 2002 until further notice". National holidays such as 15 August, All Saints, 3 October or 14 July are ordinary TARGET days. From the Due Date follow the other deadlines: the debtor's PSP must receive the collection at the latest one Inter-PSP Business Day before settlement (D-1, for every sequence type), the collection may not be sent earlier than 14 calendar days before the Due Date, the pre-notification must reach the debtor at the latest 14 calendar days before the Due Date, and a return settles at the latest 5 Inter-PSP Business Days after settlement under CORE (3 under B2B). This calculator computes all of them in your browser, from the date you type.
About the SEPA date calculator
Payment dates go wrong for a boring reason: the schemes count in three different kinds of day, and the three are routinely confused. Calendar Days are what a wall calendar shows — the 14-day pre-notification and the 14-day earliest-presentation limits are counted in these, so weekends and holidays are included. Inter-PSP Business Days are "days on which PSPs generally are open for inter-PSP business", and the rulebook is explicit that "the TARGET Days Calendar is used to identify Inter-PSP Business Days" — direct debit settlement, the D-1 presentation deadline and the return windows all hang off these. Banking Business Days are something else again: "a day on which PSPs in the relevant jurisdiction are generally open for business with customers", which depends on the country and the bank. Credit transfer execution is counted in these, not in TARGET days — which is exactly why this tool refuses to give you a credit transfer settlement date.
The TARGET calendar itself is smaller than people expect, and that is its point. The European Central Bank fixed it in a press release of 14 December 2000: New Year's Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, 1 May, Christmas Day and 26 December, on top of Saturdays and Sundays, applying "from 2002 until further notice". Six days. TARGET is a European system and it ignores national holidays entirely: 15 August is a public holiday in France, Italy and Belgium, German Unity Day closes every bank in Germany, and TARGET is open on both. The ECB also writes "Good Friday (Catholic/Protestant)" and "Easter Monday (Catholic/Protestant)" — the parenthesis is not decoration. It excludes the Orthodox Easter, which falls on a different date in most years; Greece and Cyprus are in the euro area and observe it nationally, and TARGET still closes on the Gregorian one. This tool computes Easter with the Gregorian computus, so it is arithmetic rather than a table that goes stale, and every year from 2002 onwards is available. Earlier years are refused: before 2002 the ECB published year-by-year calendars with additional closing days, so a computed answer would not be authoritative. TARGET calendar data reproduced with the European Central Bank cited as the source, as its reuse terms require.
What to know about SEPA dates and the TARGET calendar
- TARGET closes on exactly six days — 1 January, Good Friday, Easter Monday, 1 May, 25 December, 26 December — plus every Saturday and Sunday (ECB, 14 December 2000, applying from 2002).
- TARGET ignores national holidays: 15 August, All Saints, German Unity Day and 14 July are ordinary open days.
- A due date on a closed day is not an error — the rulebook rolls settlement to the next Inter-PSP Business Day, and says so explicitly.
- D-1 applies to every sequence type. The old "D-5 for a FRST, D-2 for a RCUR" was retired in November 2016 and only survives in outdated guides.
- CORE grants an 8-week no-questions-asked refund and a 13-month unauthorised-transaction claim. B2B grants neither — that is the fundamental difference between the schemes.
- Credit transfer execution is counted in Banking Business Days, not TARGET days, so no honest tool can give you an SCT settlement date offline.
Frequently asked questions
Is TARGET open today / on a given date?
TARGET is open every day except Saturdays, Sundays and six closing days: 1 January, Good Friday, Easter Monday, 1 May, 25 December and 26 December. Enter any date in the calculator above and it will tell you, along with the next open TARGET day if it is closed. National holidays do not close TARGET — only those six do.
What are the TARGET closing days in 2026?
In 2026 TARGET closes on Thursday 1 January (New Year's Day), Friday 3 April (Good Friday), Monday 6 April (Easter Monday), Friday 1 May (Labour Day), Friday 25 December (Christmas Day) and Saturday 26 December — plus every Saturday and Sunday. Enter any year from 2002 in the calendar block above to get its six dates, with a downloadable JSON dataset. The dates come from the European Central Bank's long-term calendar; Good Friday and Easter Monday are computed from the Gregorian Easter.
What is the SEPA direct debit D-1 deadline?
The creditor's PSP must send the collection so that the debtor's PSP receives it at the latest one Inter-PSP Business Day before the Due Date — that is D-1. Inter-PSP Business Days are TARGET days, so a Monday due date means the collection must arrive on the previous Friday, and a due date after a long weekend pushes the deadline back accordingly. The calculator computes it for you from the date you enter.
Is the lead time for a FRST direct debit still D-5?
No — and this is the single most common piece of stale advice about SEPA. The current rulebook states that the debtor's PSP must receive the collection "at least 1 Inter-PSP Business Day (D-1) irrespective of whether the Collection is presented as an one-off or a recurrent Collection", and that "the use of the sequence type First in a first of a recurrent series of Collections is no longer mandatory". The old D-5 for FRST and D-2 for RCUR was retired in November 2016. Plenty of guides, blog posts and even software documentation still publish the old figures; if your bank still enforces D-5, that is its own commercial choice, not a scheme rule.
What happens if my direct debit due date is a Sunday?
Nothing bad. The rulebook says: "If the Due Date falls on a day which is not an Inter-PSP Business Day, then the Settlement Date will be the next Inter-PSP Business Day." A Sunday due date settles on the Monday — unless that Monday is Easter Monday, in which case it settles on the Tuesday. Your file is not wrong and will not be rejected for it. The knock-on effect worth watching is the D-1 presentation deadline, which is counted back from the settlement date, not from the due date.
How long does a debtor have to get a SEPA direct debit refunded?
Under the CORE scheme, eight weeks from the debit date, on a no-questions-asked basis — the debtor's PSP refunds on request, without justification and without any recourse for the creditor. Beyond that, a claim for an unauthorised transaction (a collection with no valid mandate) can be brought for 13 months from the debit date under Article 71 of the Payment Services Directive; that one is investigated rather than automatic. Under the B2B scheme there is no refund right at all for an authorised collection.
Why does the tool not give me a credit transfer settlement date?
Because it cannot know it, and saying otherwise would be inventing a fact. The SCT rulebook counts a credit transfer's execution cycle in Banking Business Days — "a day on which PSPs in the relevant jurisdiction are generally open for business with customers" — not in TARGET days. A bank in Frankfurt is shut on 3 October while TARGET is open, so the two genuinely diverge. National banking holidays vary by country and by bank and no free authoritative source lists them, so the tool reports whether TARGET is open, which is a real sourced constraint, and stops there.
Does the calculator send my dates anywhere?
No. Every date is computed in your browser in JavaScript, from the date you type. Nothing is uploaded, and the tool never reads your system clock to reach a verdict — today's date is only used to pre-fill the form, so the same input always gives the same answer.