Target Typically Stays Open Easter Sunday, What Employees Should Know
Despite the assumption that Target stays open on most holidays, all ~1,978 stores closed Easter Sunday 2026. Here's the scheduling and pay playbook every team member needs.
If you called out Easter weekend expecting to work a full shift at Target this Sunday, you had the day to yourself. A Target spokesperson confirmed to multiple outlets that all U.S. locations were closed April 5, 2026, giving team members the full day off to be with family or observe the holiday. Doors reopened Monday, April 6. That closure matters more than it might seem on the surface: it shapes whether you qualify for holiday pay, how your MyTime schedule reads heading into the week, and what kind of guest traffic wave hits your store the moment you reopen.
This is the playbook for understanding what that closure means for your paycheck, your schedule requests, and how to handle Easter week across future years without getting caught flat-footed.
Know Before You Go: The Holiday Pay Reality
Easter is not on Target's paid holiday list. Full stop. The six designated paid holidays at Target, the ones where eligible team members receive time-and-a-half for hours worked, are: New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day. Because stores close on Easter company-wide, there are no hours to compensate at a premium rate; the day simply doesn't appear as a worked holiday in payroll.
That's a meaningful distinction compared to, say, Labor Day or the Fourth of July, where showing up earns you 1.5x your regular hourly rate. If you expected holiday pay for Easter and didn't see it, that's why. The same logic applies to the other two full-closure days in Target's calendar: Thanksgiving and Christmas. According to Target's own corporate communications, closing on those three holidays is an intentional, company-wide policy designed to let team members spend time with family.
To verify your specific eligibility for any paid holiday benefit, pull up Team Member Services through the MyTime portal at mytime.target.com. Your benefits tier, full-time versus part-time status, and tenure can all affect what paid time-off and holiday pay provisions apply to you. If you're unsure, that portal is your authoritative source, not a coworker's recollection.
How to Confirm Store Status Before Any Holiday
One lesson Easter week reinforces every year: don't rely on a retail industry roundup or a secondhand text to find out whether your store is open or closed. Here is the fastest verification path available to you:
1. Open the MyTime app on your phone or visit mytime.target.com and check your posted schedule. If no shift appears, you're not scheduled, which is the first signal that the store may be closed.
2. Cross-reference with Target's store locator on Target.com, which updates holiday hours by location and confirms closure dates.
3. Confirm directly with your ETL or team lead at least 48 hours before the holiday whenever possible. A quick check-in protects you against last-minute schedule errors and ensures you're not missing a corrected shift posting.
This three-step verification habit is especially important around holidays like Easter, where public holiday hours coverage can be ambiguous and some team members assume the store is open because Target operates on so many other national holidays.
What Monday Reopening Means for Your Shift
Closing for Easter doesn't mean a quiet week. The day after a company-wide closure is typically one of the higher-traffic days of the quarter for stores like Target. Guests who held off on purchases, needed to make returns, or planned Drive Up and Order Pickup orders that were unavailable Sunday will funnel into Monday. Same-day delivery orders placed over the weekend that couldn't be fulfilled also process on reopening day.
For team members scheduled Monday, April 6, that means front-end, Drive Up, and fulfillment lanes need to be staffed for an elevated volume day. If you're a team lead managing that opening, verify your floor coverage before you clock in, confirm that fulfillment queues are clear, and check that any Drive Up orders held over from the weekend are addressed early. The operational window between 8 a.m. and noon on a post-holiday Monday is typically your most compressed.
How to Request Time Off or Swap a Shift Around a Holiday
Even for a closure day, the surrounding holiday week creates real scheduling pressure, particularly for team members with childcare obligations, religious observances on Good Friday or Easter Monday, or family travel. Here's how to handle the most common scenarios through MyTime:
For a time-off request:
1. Log into the MyTime app or mytime.target.com and navigate to the "My Time Off" section.
2. Submit your request as early as possible. Holiday windows are high-demand periods and requests are typically processed in order of submission or seniority, depending on your store's policy.
3. Document the conversation. If you discussed the request verbally with your ETL or team lead, follow up in writing, even a brief message through the internal system, so there's a record.
4. Check back within 24-48 hours to confirm your request status, especially if the holiday is less than a week out.
For a shift swap:
1. In the MyTime app, find the shift you need to give away under your schedule.
2. Post it as an open shift or initiate a direct swap with a coworker who has agreed to take it.
3. The shift swap requires approval from your team lead before it's finalized. Don't assume it's covered until you see the confirmation in the app.
4. Never leave a shift uncovered without a confirmed approval in MyTime. Verbal agreements between team members that aren't logged can create attendance issues on your record.
For adjusting your availability: navigate to the availability section in MyTime and submit a change request. These typically require advance notice and leader approval and are not retroactive, so plan ahead for recurring conflicts like weekly religious observances or childcare pickups on specific days.
A Note for People Leaders on Holiday Compliance
For ETLs and team leads, holiday closure weeks carry administrative responsibility that extends beyond just confirming who's working Monday. Before and after any major holiday, verify that:
- Payroll codes reflect the closure accurately so no team member is flagged for an unexcused absence on a day the store was closed.
- Time-off requests submitted before the holiday were handled consistently and documented, particularly if any were denied. Inconsistent handling is a common source of grievances.
- Break and meal period coverage is planned in advance for the Monday reopening, especially if you're running a lean team after the holiday weekend.
- Any team member who raised a concern about scheduling fairness before the holiday has received a direct response. Public awareness of holiday hours, amplified by national retail news coverage, raises the stakes for perceived unfairness. If a team member felt they weren't given adequate notice about the Easter closure or the Monday reopening schedule, address it directly rather than letting it sit.
The Bigger Picture
Easter week is one of the cleaner tests of how well a store's scheduling infrastructure actually works. A company-wide closure removes a lot of the complexity that comes with operating on a reduced-hours holiday, but the administrative details around payroll accuracy, time-off documentation, and reopening staffing still require deliberate planning. The team members and people leaders who treat holiday weeks as a scheduling rehearsal, rather than an exception to muddle through, tend to have fewer payroll disputes, better team morale, and smoother operations when the genuinely difficult peaks arrive later in the year.
The MyTime portal and Team Member Services hub are the two tools that should anchor every step of that process. If you haven't bookmarked mytime.target.com or downloaded the MyTime app, that's the single most practical action you can take before the next holiday cycle starts.
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