Update file family-and-friends-day.md with FY26 dates

Why is this change being made?

We started our Family & Friends day benefit in early 2020 to help team members cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. We planned to continue Family & Friends days for as long as the majority of the world was dealing with the pandemic. While the World Health Organization declared an end to the COVID-19 global health emergency in early 2023, we have maintained Family & Friends days as a team member benefit with different iterations each fiscal year.

In FY25, we chose one day a quarter to recognize a Family & Friends day. In FY26, we plan to consolidate those 4 Family & Friends days near the end of the calendar year. Keeping our Friends & Family day benefit at a time when our customers are often away from work, and during a quieter time in the year, will allow us to best serve our customers and meet our business objectives.

This block of Family & Friends days will not be treated as a complete company shutdown and we will ask a group of individuals to work during these days to support customers and provide business continuity and take their days off at another time which is why we've removed the reference to a "publicly visible company shutdown".

This change adds the FY26 dates and shares the above rationale for the timing of these dates.

CHANGEME

Author and Reviewer Checklist

Please verify the check list and ensure to tick them off before the MR is merged.

• Provided a concise title for this Merge Request (MR)
• Added a description to this MR explaining the reasons for the proposed change, per say why, not just what
  • Copy/paste the Slack conversation to document it for later, or upload screenshots. Verify that no confidential data is added, and the content is SAFE
• Assign reviewers for this MR to the correct Directly Responsible Individual/s (DRI)
  • If the DRI for the page/s being updated isn’t immediately clear, then assign it to one of the people listed in the Maintained by section on the page being edited
  • If your manager does not have merge rights, please ask someone to merge it AFTER it has been approved by your manager in #mr-buddies
  • The when to get approval handbook section explains the workflow in more detail
• For transparency, share this MR with the audience that will be impacted.
  • Team: For changes that affect your direct team, share in your group Slack channel
  • Department: If the update affects your department, share the MR in your department Slack channel
  • Division: If the update affects your division, share the MR in your division Slack channel
  • Company: If the update affects all (or the majority of) GitLab team members, post an update in #whats-happening-at-gitlab linking to this MR
    • For high-priority company-wide announcements work with the internal communications team to post the update in #company-fyi and align on a plan to circulate in additional channels like the "While You Were Iterating" Newsletter

Commits

• Update file family-and-friends-day.md

---

added HandbookContent label

assigned to @drogozinski

marked the checklist item Provided a concise title for this [Merge Request (MR)][mr] as completed

marked the checklist item Added a description to this MR explaining the reasons for the proposed change, per [say why, not just what][say-why-not-just-what] as completed

approved this merge request

marked the checklist item Assign reviewers for this MR to the correct [Directly Responsible Individual/s (DRI)][dri] as completed

started a merge train

merged

mentioned in commit 85079fe4

resolved all threads