Easter in Australia: Dates, History and Where to Celebrate

Easter in Australia is a four-day public holiday period built around Good Friday and Easter Monday, but it is also a moveable feast that lands on a different weekend every year, a genuine religious observance for millions of Australians, and a very secular celebration of chocolate, hot cross buns and long weekends for millions more. If you are new to Australia, the mix can be confusing: the date changes every year, the public holidays are not quite the same in every state, and the country’s most famous Easter symbol is a native marsupial rather than a rabbit. This guide covers when Easter falls each year, what actually happened to create the holiday, how Australians mark it today, and where to go if you want to experience it properly – from the 200-year-old Sydney Royal Easter Show to the quiet family barbecues that most Australians actually have.

When is Easter in Australia?

Unlike Australia Day or Christmas Day, Easter does not fall on a fixed date. It is calculated using the moon: Easter Sunday is the first Sunday after the first ecclesiastical full moon on or after 21 March, a rule set by the Christian church in the fourth century. Because of this, Easter Sunday can fall anywhere between 22 March and 25 April depending on the year, and the whole four-day public holiday period moves with it.

Easter public holidays by state (2026)

Good Friday and Easter Monday are public holidays everywhere in Australia. What happens on Easter Saturday and Easter Sunday is where states genuinely differ, and Tasmania stands apart from every other state. Based on the Fair Work Ombudsman’s official 2026 public holiday lists:

The history of Easter, and how it came to Australia

Easter is the oldest and, for practising Christians, most important festival in the Christian calendar, commemorating the death of Jesus Christ on Good Friday and his resurrection on Easter Sunday, three days later. The festival’s timing was formally standardised at the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, which settled on the lunar-based formula still used today: the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox. The name “Easter” itself has debated origins, but is generally linked to old Germanic/English words for the spring season, while many other languages use words derived from “Pascha”, connecting the festival to the Jewish Passover it grew out of.

Easter arrived in Australia with British colonisation from 1788 onward, observed from the earliest colonial years as it was in England, with church services and a public holiday for Good Friday and Easter Monday. As Australia became a more religiously diverse and increasingly secular society over the 20th century, Easter kept its place as a public holiday but became less exclusively religious in practice: today it functions simultaneously as a solemn religious observance for practising Christians, a cultural touchpoint for people raised Christian who no longer actively practise, and simply a four-day long weekend for everyone else, regardless of faith.

Hot cross buns, chocolate eggs and Australia's own Easter Bilby

Most of Australia’s present-day Easter traditions are the same ones found across the English-speaking world: hot cross buns (spiced, fruited buns marked with a cross, traditionally eaten on Good Friday but sold in supermarkets from as early as Boxing Day), chocolate eggs, and family gatherings. Supermarkets, cafes and bakeries treat hot cross bun season as a genuine commercial event, with new flavours released every year well before Easter itself arrives.

Why Australia has a bilby instead of a bunny

Australia is one of the few countries with its own distinct twist on the Easter Bunny: the Easter Bilby. The bilby is a small, endangered, rabbit-eared native marsupial, and its adoption as an alternative Easter symbol was a deliberate conservation campaign rather than an old folk tradition. The Foundation for Rabbit-Free Australia (originally the Anti-Rabbit Research Foundation of Australia) developed and registered the Easter Bilby campaign in December 1991, aiming to raise awareness of the damage introduced European rabbits do to native Australian plants and animals – the same animal the Easter Bunny represents is, in Australia, a declared agricultural and environmental pest. Adelaide’s Haigh’s Chocolates made the first commercial chocolate Easter Bilby in 1993, donating part of the proceeds to the Foundation, and other manufacturers have since followed. The Save the Bilby Fund, established in 1999, now uses Easter Bilby sales and awareness to help fund bilby conservation programs, including a predator-free “bilby fence” in western Queensland.

Good Friday and seafood

Eating fish or seafood rather than meat on Good Friday began as a Catholic tradition of abstinence, but it has become a much broader Australian custom that many non-Christian and non-religious households also observe. A Roy Morgan survey found that around 60% of Australians eat fish or seafood on Good Friday, including many who do not identify as Christian. The clearest sign of this is at Sydney Fish Market, one of the largest of its kind in the world: on a typical Good Friday, the market draws more than 60,000 visitors and sells over 650 tonnes of seafood in a single day, according to the NSW Government, with many people arriving before dawn for the freshest stock.

What is open and closed over Easter

Good Friday is treated as a restricted trading day in most of Australia: major supermarkets including Woolworths, Coles and Aldi are closed nationally, along with most large retail stores, and bottle shops are generally closed too. Small exemptions apply in some states for pharmacies, convenience stores and certain tourist-area businesses, and the exact rules vary by state, so it pays to check locally rather than assume. Easter Sunday and Easter Monday trading rules also vary by state – some allow full trading, others keep restrictions in place. Public transport generally keeps running on a reduced, Sunday-style timetable across the long weekend, and it is worth checking your state’s transport app before travelling.

Where to visit: the Sydney Royal Easter Show

If there is one single Easter event worth building a trip around, it is the Sydney Royal Easter Show. First held in 1823, it is one of the oldest continuously running events in Australia and, today, one of the largest agricultural and entertainment shows in the country, drawing close to 900,000 visitors across its run. The Show moved to its current home at Sydney Olympic Park, Homebush, in 1998, after more than a century at the old Sydney Showground near Moore Park. The 2026 Show runs from Thursday 2 April to Monday 13 April, covering the entire Easter long weekend and beyond.

Despite its name, the Show is still fundamentally an agricultural show at heart: woodchopping competitions, cattle, horse and animal judging, farm produce and craft competitions sit alongside carnival rides, showbags, fireworks and live entertainment. It is a genuinely useful way for newcomers to see a slice of rural and regional Australian culture without leaving Sydney. Tickets are sold exclusively through Ticketmaster as the Show’s authorised ticketing partner, and general admission tickets include same-day return public transport within Sydney – worth factoring in if you are travelling by train.

Other places to spend Easter

Every capital city and region has its own way of marking the long weekend, and it does not have to involve a show ticket. Some practical ideas, particularly if you are new to Australia and want an easy, low-cost long weekend:

• Local egg hunts and family events: zoos, wildlife parks, botanic gardens and shopping centres in every major city run free or low-cost Easter egg hunts and family activities over the long weekend – check your local council or shopping centre’s website in the lead-up to Easter.
• Wine regions: the Barossa Valley and Adelaide Hills (SA), the Yarra Valley and Mornington Peninsula (VIC), and the Hunter Valley (NSW) are popular Easter day-trip and weekend destinations, often with cellar door events timed for the holiday.
• Coastal getaways: the Great Ocean Road (VIC), Byron Bay and the NSW North Coast, and the Gold Coast (QLD) are consistently among the most popular Easter travel destinations, since the weather is still warm across most of the country in March and April.
• Regional shows: most other state capitals hold their own Royal Show later in the year rather than at Easter (Brisbane’s Ekka in August, Melbourne’s Royal Show and Perth’s Royal Show both in September), so the Sydney Royal Easter Show is genuinely the one capital-city show timed to the holiday itself.

Easter as a newcomer: what to actually expect

If you are studying or working in Australia and away from family, Easter can feel like a quiet stretch: universities and most workplaces close or slow down for the long weekend, and many Australians travel to see family or take a short holiday, so cities can feel noticeably emptier than usual. A few practical things worth knowing:

• University teaching typically pauses for a short mid-semester break around Easter, though exact dates depend on your institution and semester structure – check your own university’s academic calendar rather than assuming.
• If you are religious, most cities have churches offering Easter services in a wide range of languages and denominations – a quick search or a call to a local parish will usually turn up an English-language or community-language service nearby.
• If you are not religious or do not celebrate Easter, there is no expectation to participate – it is simply a public holiday like any other, and plenty of Australians treat it exactly that way too.
• Accommodation and flights for popular Easter getaway destinations (Gold Coast, Byron Bay, wine regions) book out and rise in price well in advance, so plan early if you want to travel.

Related public holidays and observances

For the full list of 2026 public holidays across every state and territory, see our Australian public holidays guide. Easter is also close on the calendar to ANZAC Day – see our ANZAC Day Australia guide for what happens when the two coincide.

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