Government Holiday Calendar 2026 & 2027

Full holiday list

Click a year tab above to switch the table below along with the calendar.

Gazetted vs. restricted holidays — what's the difference?

A gazetted holiday is a compulsory, office-wide closure notified in Annexure-I of the DoPT Office Memorandum. Every Central Government office in Delhi/New Delhi observes the same 17 gazetted holidays; no employee needs to apply for these, and no substitute day is given if one happens to fall on a weekend.

A restricted holiday (RH) is optional. The DoPT publishes a much longer list — 34 occasions for 2026 and 32 for 2027 — in Annexure-II, and each employee may avail any two of these in a calendar year, subject to the usual administrative approval of the controlling officer. RH days are not office closures; colleagues who don't opt for that date continue to work as normal.

How restricted holidays actually work

• An employee can avail at most two restricted holidays in a calendar year, chosen from the notified Annexure-II list.
• Prior intimation/approval from the reporting or controlling officer is generally required, since it is treated like a day of planned absence rather than an automatic closure.
• RH days cannot be carried forward, combined into more than two, or exchanged for cash.
• Offices outside Delhi/New Delhi may notify a separate, locally relevant restricted holiday list drawn up by the Central Government Employees Welfare Coordination Committee of that State.

Offices outside Delhi/New Delhi — the 3+3 rule

Administrative offices located outside Delhi/New Delhi don't use the Annexure-I list directly. Instead, they compulsorily observe three national holidays — Republic Day, Independence Day and Mahatma Gandhi's Birthday — plus three more holidays chosen locally from a fixed panel of 14 festivals (Buddha Purnima, Christmas, Dussehra, Diwali, Good Friday, Guru Nanak's Birthday, Id-ul-Fitr, Id-ul-Zuha, Mahavir Jayanti, Muharram and Id-e-Milad among them). These three variable holidays are finalised by the State-level Welfare Coordination Committee and, once notified, cannot be changed for that State.

In addition, a separate panel of 12 optional regional festivals — Holi, Janamashtami, Ram Navami, Maha Shivratri, Ganesh Chaturthi, Makar Sankranti, Rath Yatra, Onam, Pongal, Basant Panchami, Vishu/Vaisakhi/Ugadi-type new year festivals, and an additional Dussehra day — feeds into how each State fixes its three variable holidays and its own restricted holiday list.

The Diwali / Naraka Chaturdasi rule

In 2026, Deepavali falls on Sunday, 8 November. Because a Sunday holiday effectively wastes a gazetted holiday, the O.M. permits offices in a State to instead observe the holiday on Naraka Chaturdasi (7 November) — but only if that State has separately declared Naraka Chaturdasi, and not Deepavali, as the compulsory Diwali holiday for its own State Government offices. Check your local Coordination Committee notification if this applies to you. In 2027, Diwali falls on a Friday, so this substitution question does not arise.

Compulsory closures vs. no-substitute rule

One rule employees are often surprised by: if a gazetted festival holiday happens to fall on a weekly off (typically Sunday) or coincides with another festival on the same date, no substitute holiday is granted. This is explicitly stated at para 3.2 of both the 2026 and 2027 Office Memoranda. In 2027, for instance, Independence Day and Id-e-Milad both fall on 15 August — a Sunday — with no compensatory day off for either.

Quick answers: when is each festival holiday in 2026 & 2027?

The exact dates Central Government employees search for most, pulled straight from the official Annexures above.

Frequently Asked Questions

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