UAE Public Holidays: The Official List and What It Means for Your Business

Almost every article about UAE holidays makes the same two mistakes. It prints exact Eid dates a year in advance as though they were settled, and it quietly implies you get the day back if a holiday lands on your weekend.

Both are wrong, and the second one costs people real days off. This guide gives you the official list, the legal basis, an honest explanation of why the Islamic dates move, and the part nobody writes about: what a public holiday actually does to a visa application, a licence renewal or a bank account that is mid-process.

The Official List

This is the list as published by the UAE government on u.ae, under Cabinet Resolution No. 27 of 2024 Concerning the Public Holidays in the State.

It applies to both the public and the private sector, which is worth stating because people often assume the private sector gets fewer days.

It does not.

Read that middle column carefully, because it is the whole reason this subject confuses people. Five of the seven are defined by a date in the Islamic lunar calendar, not the Gregorian one.

The law tells you which Islamic day the holiday falls on. It cannot tell you which Gregorian day that will be, because that depends on when the new moon is actually sighted.

Arafah Day and Eid Al Adha run together, so in practice that block is usually four consecutive days.

Eid Al Fitr is commonly announced as a longer break than the three Shawwal days alone, because the final day or two of Ramadan can be included depending on whether Ramadan runs 29 or 30 days.

One Name You May Not Find on the Official List

A number of widely read articles still list Commemoration Day at the end of November as a UAE public holiday. When we checked the official public holidays page on u.ae against Cabinet Resolution No. 27 of 2024, it was not among the seven listed there.

We are stating that carefully rather than dramatically, because this is exactly the kind of detail that changes with a new resolution and because Commemoration Day remains a significant national occasion regardless of how it is classified.

The practical advice is simple: plan from the official list and the annual Cabinet announcement, not from a blog post, and that includes this one.

Why the Eid Dates Arrive so Late

The Islamic calendar is lunar. A month begins when the new crescent moon is sighted, and a lunar month is either 29 or 30 days.

Nobody knows in advance which it will be for a given month, because it depends on an actual observation on an actual evening in actual weather conditions.

That single day of uncertainty cascades. If Ramadan runs 30 days instead of 29, Eid Al Fitr moves by a day, and so does the working week that everyone planned around it.

Astronomical calculation can predict the likely date with high confidence, which is why calendars print estimates, but the UAE confirms by sighting, and the confirmation is what the law follows.

For planning purposes in 2026, the practical guidance is to expect Eid Al Fitr in the second half of March, Eid Al Adha in late May, the Hijri New Year in mid June and the Prophet's Birthday in late August, then confirm each against the official announcement before committing to anything expensive.

We are giving you months rather than dates on purpose, because a date we cannot verify is worse than no date at all.

The Weekend Rule That Costs People Days Off

This is the most valuable sentence in the whole resolution and almost nobody quotes it. Article 3 provides that a public holiday cannot be transferred to another day if it coincides with another public holiday or falls on the weekend.

In plain terms: if National Day lands on a Saturday, you do not get the Monday instead. The holiday and your weekend simply overlap, and that year you are down a day compared with a year where it falls midweek.

The same applies when Arafah Day and a weekend collide, or when two holidays land on the same date.

This matters commercially as well as personally. A year where several holidays fall on weekends is a year with more working days in it, and if you have built a delivery schedule or a staffing budget on an assumed number of public holidays, that assumption needs checking each year rather than carrying forward.

What Your Employer Owes You

Public holidays are paid days off. Under the UAE labour law, if the nature of the work means an employee has to work on a public holiday, the employer must give a replacement rest day or pay the basic wage for that day plus an increase of at least 50%.

The obligation sits with the employer, not with the employee to ask.

That applies to shift businesses, hospitality, healthcare, delivery, security and anyone else who cannot simply close.

The rules are administered by MOHRE, and our guides to UAE labour law basics and MOHRE enquiries cover how to check your own record and raise a complaint if one is needed.

Public holidays are separate from annual leave. They do not come out of your leave entitlement, and a holiday falling inside a booked annual leave period does not extend the leave automatically, which is a common point of confusion in offices here.

Free Zone Employees, and Whether Anything Differs

Public holidays are set at federal level and apply nationally, so a free zone employee gets the same public holidays as a mainland employee.

What can differ is the employment framework around them: several free zones apply their own employment regulations, and DIFC and ADGM operate their own legal systems entirely.

In practice the holiday dates are the same everywhere. If you are in a financial free zone, check your own employment regulations for the detail on compensation and leave interaction rather than assuming the federal wording applies word for word.

Our guide to labour cards and work permits explains the wider split between mainland and free zone employment administration.

What Actually Closes, and What Does Not

This is the practical question behind most holiday searches, and the answer is more nuanced than "everything shuts". Government service centres, banks and most offices close.

Malls, restaurants, hotels and leisure venues stay very much open and are typically busier than usual, because a public holiday in the UAE is a peak trading period for consumer businesses rather than a quiet one.

Online government services generally keep running, since the portals do not close even when the counters do. You can usually still submit an application, check a status or pay a fee.

What stops is the human processing behind it, and any step that requires you to physically attend somewhere.

Ramadan is a separate matter from the holidays themselves. Working hours are reduced during Ramadan under the labour law, government service hours shift, and the whole rhythm of the business day changes.

Plan around Ramadan as a period, not just around the Eid days at the end of it.

What a Holiday Does to Your Paperwork

This is the part no other holiday article covers, and it is the part that costs money. Every process we run for clients has a queue behind it, and a four day public holiday does not pause the deadline, it only pauses the processing.

• Visa applications and entry permits. Submission can continue online, but medical fitness centres, biometrics appointments and typing centres close, so anything needing a physical step stops. See the employment visa process.
• Entry permit validity. A permit has a limited life and a holiday consumes part of it. If the window is tight, the holiday can be the reason it expires.
• Licence renewals. The expiry date does not move because of a holiday. Renew before the break, not during it. See renewals.
• Bank account opening. Compliance teams pause, and a file waiting on one clarification can sit for a week. See how long an account takes.
• Attestation and legalisation. Already the slowest step in any process, and it involves offices in more than one country. See document attestation.
• Visa medicals and Emirates ID. Appointment based and physical, so both stop entirely. See the medical test.

The rule we work to internally is simple: assume the two working days before a long holiday are effectively full, and the two after it are a backlog. That is a working week gone from any timeline that crosses a major Eid.

The Deadline Trap

Here is the trap, stated plainly. Public holidays pause the offices.

They do not pause expiry dates, grace periods or fine accrual. A visa that expires during Eid is expired, and the grace period continues to count down while nobody is at a counter to help you.

The same applies to a trade licence, an establishment card and a residence visa renewal. If any of those falls due within two weeks of a major holiday, treat the holiday as though it has already happened and act before it.

Our guides to overstay fines and the establishment card both cover what happens when a deadline passes quietly.

This is genuinely the single most useful thing on this page for a business owner. Everything else here is calendar information.

This one is a cost.

Planning Your Year Around the Calendar

Two fixed anchors, and a set of moving ones. January opens with a single day off.

December closes with two, and in practice a longer break as the National Day period runs into the end of the year. Between them, the Islamic holidays move earlier each Gregorian year by roughly eleven days, because the lunar year is shorter.

That drift is worth understanding if you plan more than a year ahead. A holiday that lands in late March this year lands in mid March next year and in early March the year after.

Anything you schedule annually, from audits to trade shows to school terms, gradually collides with a different holiday over time.

Summer is the other planning reality. Between the Eid Al Adha period and the end of August, a very large share of UAE residents travel, schools are closed, and offices run thin.

Combining that with a holiday break makes it the least productive window of the year for anything requiring several people to be available.

If You Are Opening a Business This Year

Sequence around the calendar rather than fighting it. Company formation itself is fast, and the steps that are genuinely at risk from a holiday are the ones involving other people: bank onboarding, medical appointments, attestation and any external approval.

The workable approach is to front load anything with a queue. Start the bank conversation before a holiday period rather than during it, get medicals done early rather than at the end of a permit window, and treat attestation as a two month task in a year with an Eid in it.

Our step by step setup guide lays out the full sequence, and the cost calculator prices it exactly.

Common Questions We Get Asked in the Office

Do part time and temporary staff get public holidays? Employees are entitled to public holidays under the labour law, with the detail depending on the contract type and working pattern.

Ask before assuming, and get the answer in writing in the contract.

Does a holiday extend my annual leave? No. A public holiday that falls inside booked annual leave does not automatically add a day to the leave.

Employers vary in how they handle it in practice, which is why it should be in the policy rather than in folklore.

Do the dates differ between emirates? The public holidays are federal, so no. What can differ is how individual government departments in each emirate handle their service hours around the break, and that is worth checking locally if you have something time critical with a specific department.

The Honest Summary

Seven public holidays, two of them on fixed dates, five following the moon and confirmed shortly before they arrive. No holiday is moved if it lands on your weekend.

Working one earns you a replacement day or half again on your pay. That is the whole legal picture, and it comes from Cabinet Resolution No. 27 of 2024 rather than from anyone's calendar app.

The part that costs you money is not knowing the dates, it is what happens to anything with a deadline sitting on the other side of them.

Get your renewals, medicals, attestations and bank steps done before a long break rather than through it, and the holidays become what they should be, which is time off rather than a delay you did not budget for.