Holidays in India 2026 and 2027: Employer Calendar Guide

Planning leave, payroll, or a team roster and not sure which days actually close offices across India? There is no single national list to copy: holidays in India run on several overlapping calendars, so a day that shuts Mumbai can be an ordinary working day in Bengaluru.

This guide gives you the verified 2026 and 2027 lists, explains how national, gazetted, state, restricted, and bank holidays differ, and shows what each means for pay and compliance. If you are building a team here, the same calendar sits behind every decision you make when you hire employees in India.

What are the national holidays in India?

India has exactly three national holidays: Republic Day on January 26, Independence Day on August 15, and Gandhi Jayanti on October 2. They apply in every state and union territory, to public and private employers alike, and every employee gets them as paid days off.

The dates never change, only the weekday does, and knowing which days are legally compulsory is where to check your India compliance.

One correction many calendars miss: the duty to pay for these days comes from state law, usually a National and Festival Holidays Act or a Shops and Establishments Act, not from the Negotiable Instruments Act, which governs bank closures.

Every establishment must close on these three days, and a business that has to operate needs the employee's consent and must pay the state's holiday rate.

What is the full list of public holidays in India in 2026?

The 2026 holiday calendar for India starts with the central government's list of 17 gazetted public holidays, issued by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) in Office Memorandum F.No. 12/2/2023-JCA dated July 3, 2025. Central offices in Delhi observe all 17. Offices elsewhere observe 14 fixed holidays plus three chosen locally from 12 optional festivals.

That split is why national and state calendars can disagree without either being wrong. Whether you run your own entity or hire through PEO services in India, this central list is your base layer. One date also moved: DoPT shifted Bakrid from May 27 to May 28, 2026 after the moon sighting.

Independence Day fell on a Saturday and Diwali on a Sunday, and DoPT grants no substitute day when a festival lands on a weekly off, so plan compensatory cover rather than expect a replacement day.

Note: Id-ul-Fitr, Bakrid, Muharram and Milad-un-Nabi follow the moon, so final dates are confirmed only days ahead. DoPT publishes each change.

Treat those four lunar dates as provisional until the week before, and every other date as fixed.

How many public holidays do employees in India get?

There is no single national number. Most private employers in India give 10 to 14 paid public holidays a year, built from four layers. Only the three national holidays are compulsory everywhere, and the rest depends on the state and company policy.

The four layers are:

• National holidays: three fixed days, compulsory for every employer.
• Central gazetted holidays: 17 days binding central government offices, public sector undertakings and banks.
• State holidays: each state and union territory notifies its own list every year.
• Restricted holidays: optional festivals from which each employee picks two.

The legal floor is lower than US teams used to 11 federal holidays expect. Tamil Nadu requires nine paid holidays a year, four fixed days including Labour Day on May 1 plus five festivals, and Karnataka requires ten.

Employers that give only the minimum struggle to hire, so it pays to build a competitive CTC offer rather than default to the statutory floor, and to model the real cost of time off with an employee cost calculator for India.

What does a private company holiday list look like in 2026?

From the calendars we set up for clients, a typical private company gives 10 to 14 paid holidays: the three national days, the state's own festival days, and the festivals most staff observe.

The list below is an illustrative pattern for a Bengaluru or Hyderabad office in 2026.

Swap the regional rows for your state, and add two restricted picks on top.

What are restricted holidays in India?

Restricted holidays are festivals the central government recognizes without closing offices. They sit in Annexure II of the DoPT memorandum, and each central government employee may take any two a year. Many private employers borrow the idea as floating holidays, so staff can mark their own festivals.

The difference is simple: a gazetted holiday closes the office for everyone, while a restricted holiday keeps it open and lets each person take the day. The 2026 list has 34 restricted holidays.

Having run these choices for more than 2,000 employees, what works is to collect every pick in January and treat it as booked leave. Many teams fold these into a wider India benefits package so staff can honor the festivals that matter to them.

What are the state holidays in India in 2026?

State holidays are declared by each state and union territory under Section 25 of the Negotiable Instruments Act and local holiday laws. A date that closes offices in one state can be a normal workday next door.

These are the state holidays that most often affect global teams. For any other state, the official state gazette is the primary source.

Some states stretch these into multi-day closures, as Kerala did with four days for Onam. Where you base your team changes the whole calendar, so it is worth comparing Indian cities for your team before you hire, or choosing to set up a GCC in India in one location to keep the list consistent.

Plan by state first, and the national list becomes a checklist rather than a guess.

When are the long weekends in India in 2027?

Long weekends drive leave requests, project deadlines, and travel plans, so it helps to map them before the year starts. In 2027 several gazetted holidays sit next to a weekend, and a single bridge day of planned leave turns each one into a three or four day break.

The table below lists the strongest 2027 long-weekend opportunities and the bridge day each one needs.

Bakrid is a lunar date, so confirm it closer to the day before you approve leave. The flip side is that six gazetted holidays fall on a weekend in 2027 with no substitute day, so build these long weekends into capacity planning rather than discovering them in March.

What are the bank holidays in India in 2026?

Bank holidays are a separate list, declared state by state under the Negotiable Instruments Act and published by the Reserve Bank of India. A public holiday does not always close banks, and vice versa, and when banks close, wires can sit for a day or more, which is where running payroll in India gets tricky.

We process over $20 million in annual payroll for global clients, and bank closures surprise almost every new team. Four kinds of day close banks.

The working rule is to start salary and contractor payments at least two business days before any state closure. RBI's holiday matrix filters closures by state and month.

The real risk is a statutory deadline next to a festival: TDS is due by the 7th and PF and ESI by the 15th, so a November holiday squeezes the window. Estimate your India payroll run cost and plan each cycle around these closures so staff are always paid employees in India on time.

What must employers pay if staff work on a public holiday in India?

Under most state National and Festival Holidays Acts, an employee who works on a national or festival holiday is entitled to twice the normal daily wage, or normal wages plus a paid substitute day off. In several states the employee, not the employer, chooses which.

Three practical points follow:

• Holiday on a weekly off: there is no automatic replacement day unless your policy or state law grants one.
• Overtime: long holiday shifts can also trigger overtime at twice the ordinary rate under the Code on Wages.
• Contractors: independent contractors are not covered by these Acts, so their holiday pay depends on the contract.

Put the rule in your holiday policy, model the double-pay cases in an India salary calculator, and a holiday shift becomes a routine approval rather than a dispute.

Is election day a paid holiday in India?

Yes. Section 135B of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 gives every employee entitled to vote a paid holiday on polling day, including daily wage and casual workers. No wage deduction is allowed, and an employer who refuses can be fined up to ₹500 (about $6).

It never appears on a printed calendar. In 2026 it applied in Assam, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal for the assembly elections. Most states also declare dry days, when alcohol sales stop, on polling days and national holidays, so plan client events around them.

Keep a copy of the official polling day holiday notice on file in case anyone questions the entitlement.

How did India's new labour codes change holiday and leave rules?

The four labour codes took effect on November 21, 2025, and central rules under all four were notified on May 8, 2026. They left the national holidays and state festival holiday duties untouched, so the calendar above does not change. What moved is annual leave.

Two changes matter for holiday planning:

• Annual leave now vests after 180 days of work in a calendar year, down from 240, at one day per 20 days worked under the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code.
• State rules are still catching up, so most private employers follow their state, and more generous state provisions still apply.

This information is for general guidance, so consult a legal expert for your situation. Some teams register an Indian entity for control, while others use an EOR, and either way our gratuity calculator helps you cost the statutory benefits that sit alongside leave.

What are the holidays in India in 2027?

DoPT released the 2027 central government holiday list on July 16, 2026. It again carries 17 gazetted holidays for Delhi offices, with 14 compulsory days and three local picks elsewhere, and employees can still take two restricted holidays.

The 2027 calendar lands badly for employees. Six of the 17 fall on a weekend, Milad-un-Nabi coincides with Independence Day on Sunday, August 15, and Diwali moves early, to Friday, October 29.

With no substitute days for weekend festivals, expect questions about compensatory time. Draft your 2027 list on these dates now, then revise once in January when state and bank lists are out, and keep your onboarding timeline for new hires aligned to it.

How can Wisemonk help you manage India's holiday calendar?

Wisemonk is an India-native Employer of Record (EOR) provider. We become the legal employer for your team in India, so you can hire, pay, and manage people without a local entity, and the holiday calendar becomes our job rather than yours.

Wisemonk EOR simplifies employee onboarding, payroll, and local employment compliance, helping businesses manage their teams in India with confidence.

Here is what that covers:

• Hiring and onboarding: When you take on a new person, we help source the candidate where you need it, issue a compliant offer letter and employment contract, and set that hire's correct state holiday list and two restricted picks in their first week. The problem this removes is the common one of a joiner in Kerala or Tamil Nadu whose local festivals were never added to the calendar, which turns into pay and leave disputes months later. Getting it right at onboarding means the calendar is accurate from day one when you hire talent in India, with no entity of your own to run.
• Payroll management: Each month we calculate gross-to-net pay in rupees, deduct and deposit TDS, PF, ESI, and professional tax, issue payslips, and time every payment run around the exact state bank closures this guide describes, including second and fourth Saturdays. The risk we take off your plate is a salary that clears late because a festival or a bank Saturday landed on your pay date, which damages trust quickly with a new team. It is the same discipline behind our payroll outsourcing in India, so people are paid on time even in a festival-heavy month.
• Benefits administration: We enrol your team in group health insurance, administer the statutory benefits that sit alongside leave (PF, ESI, and gratuity), and track holiday pay, compensatory days off, and each employee's leave balance in one system. Handled on spreadsheets, holiday-work pay and substitute days are easy to miss, which is both a compliance gap and a morale problem. We can also structure flexible benefits for India staff, so people can honour the festivals that matter to them, which helps you keep them.
• Compliance and employee management: We monitor central and state holiday notifications, DoPT revisions, and Shops and Establishments and labour-code rules, then apply them to your team so your holiday and leave policy stays current as dates move. The specific exposure here is a misread holiday-pay duty or a contractor who is really an employee, both of which lead to penalties and back-pay. We surface worker-classification risk early with our misclassification check, so problems come to light before an audit does.
• Contractor management: For people you engage as contractors rather than employees, we draft compliant agreements, pay their invoices locally in rupees, and keep them clearly outside the employee holiday and leave rules this guide covers. Blurring that line invites reclassification, where a contractor is treated as a de facto employee and you owe holiday pay, PF, and gratuity retroactively. Our compliant contractor contracts hold the distinction firm, so a contractor relationship does not quietly become an employment liability.

Together these mean one team owns your India holidays, payroll, and compliance, so a festival week never becomes a missed salary or a late filing.

India is where we are strongest. We handle employment, payroll, benefits, and compliance for your India team in-house, with our own people on the ground. We are planning to extend into further markets, including the US and the UK, in future.

What do clients say about working with Wisemonk?

Two clients on what dependable India payroll looks like:

“Red Hill Technology Solutions has run its India engineering team on Wisemonk for the past year and a half. They handle payroll and benefits end to end, so I can offer my employees good health insurance without having to master the idiosyncrasies of Indian benefits myself. Payroll cutoff reminders arrive every month before I need them, and off-cycle bonus runs have never been a problem. Even equipment purchasing, a real headache for a US company shipping to Indian addresses, is as simple as telling them what I need. Exchange rates are fair and the pricing is transparent. Deepika Elumalai, our point of contact, ties it all together. Whatever comes up, she pulls in the right people and sees it through. For any US company building a team in India, Wisemonk is an easy recommendation.”
- Tak Yamamoto, President, Red Hill Technology Solutions, Inc.

“We came across Wisemonk and met with the CEO and staff to explain our situation, and were very impressed with their customer-focused approach to their business. Wisemonk onboarded all of my employees in one or two days. They paid my employees' salaries on the day after my payment cleared. Needless to say, my employees and I were very satisfied with their service then and remain so over a year later. We are an American company, so I was very happy to see that they have a US bank account where I can make ACH payments to minimize bank charges. All salary payments are timely. They worked directly with my employees to enroll them in the health care program and explain any coverage-related issues. The best part is that we get to work with a dedicated person assigned to our company. I would highly recommend Wisemonk and think of them as our Indian HR department.”
- Frank Menes, Founder & CEO, Senem RFP