Holiday Calendar 2026 India: Government, Restricted & Corporate Holiday in One Place 

Every HR team requires to float holiday calendar with the start of new financial year. This calendar is a standardised way to keep every employee informed and leave management can be done in a structured way. 

In this blog, we are offering detailed holiday calendar(s) so that HR needs not to juggle multiple website and notices before rolling out the list for their employees working across different states of India. 

The holiday calendar 2026 for India has 17 gazetted (compulsory) central government holidays, 34 restricted holidays employees can choose from, and 12 optional festivals from which each state picks 3.  

Below you’ll find the full India public holiday list 2026 with dates and days, the best long weekends, a ready-made corporate holiday list 2026 for companies in India, and the rules HR teams actually need. 

Govt Holidays 2026: The 17 Days Every Central Office Shuts Down 

These are the gazetted holidays for central government administrative offices in Delhi/New Delhi. Most state governments, PSUs and many private employers build their own list around them, so this is the backbone of any list of holidays 2026. 

*Islamic festival dates depend on moon sighting and may shift by a day. Source: DoPT Office Memorandum F.No. 12/2/2023-JCA dated 03.07.2025. 

The weekend problem nobody mentions 

Three big holidays land on a weekend this year: Id-ul-Fitr (Saturday, 21 March), Independence Day (Saturday, 15 August) and Diwali (Sunday, 8 November). Government offices do not shift these to a weekday. Private companies can, and many move Diwali to Monday, 9 November. Decide this early and say it clearly in your policy. Silence breeds 47 Slack messages. 

Restricted Holidays 2026: Pick Two, Choose Wisely 

A restricted holiday (RH) is an optional day off an employee picks from a published list, usually for a festival that matters to them personally. Central government employees can take 2 restricted holidays per year. Want the full definition? Here is the restricted holiday meaning in our HR glossary. 

*Dates subject to moon sighting. Hazarat Ali’s Birthday appears twice in 2026 because the Islamic calendar year is shorter than the Gregorian one. Source: DoPT OM dated 03.07.2025, Annexure II.

The 12 Optional Holidays: Where States Get a Say 

Beyond the 14 holidays fixed for every central office, each state’s Central Government Employees Welfare Coordination Committee picks 3 more from the list below. That’s why your Bengaluru and Kolkata offices never have quite the same calendar. (New to the term? Here is the optional holiday meaning.) 

1. An additional day for Dussehra 
2. Holi 
3. Janmashtami (Vaishnavi) 
4. Ram Navami 
5. Maha Shivaratri 
6. Ganesh Chaturthi / Vinayaka Chaturthi 
7. Makar Sankranti 
8. Rath Yatra 
9. Onam 
10. Pongal 
11. Sri Panchami / Basant Panchami 
12. Vishu / Vaisakhi / Vaisakhadi / Bhag Bihu / Mashadi / Ugadi / Chaitra Sukladi / Cheti Chand / Gudi Padwa / 1st Navratra / Nauraz / Chhath Puja / Karwa Chauth 

Corporate Holiday List 2026 for Companies in India: A Ready-to-Use Template 

Private companies don’t have to copy the government list. Most corporate holidays are a mix of the three national holidays, the festivals your workforce actually celebrates, and state-mandated days under your local Shops & Establishments or Festival Holidays rules. Most Indian companies land on 10 to 12 paid company holidays plus 1 to 3 floaters. 

Here is a balanced sample you can adapt: 

Sample only. Swap in state festivals (Pongal, Onam, Durga Puja, Ganesh Chaturthi, Chhath) based on where your people work, and check your state’s minimum holiday requirement. 

Floater holidays: the peace treaty for diverse teams 

Can’t please everyone with 12 days? Add 2 or 3 floating holidays. Employees pick from a list (Eid, Onam, Pongal, Christmas Eve, Guru Nanak Jayanti and so on). Fair for a mixed workforce, simple to track, and nobody argues about whose festival made the cut. 

Long Weekends 2026: The Calendar’s Hidden Bonus Rounds 

Based on gazetted holidays and a Monday-to-Friday week. Tag them in your planning before your team does it for you. 

The 26 March–5 April stretch is the year’s best deal: 3 gazetted holidays plus 2 weekends, bridged by 4 days of leave. 

Holidays Still Left in 2026 (as of October) 

Planning Q4 shifts, payroll cut-offs or year-end leave? Here is what remains on the list of holidays 2026: 

State Holidays 2026: Same Country, Different Calendars 

State governments publish their own lists, and they add regional festivals and formation days the central list ignores. A few that most often trip up multi-state HR teams: 

Always confirm against your state government’s official 2026 holiday notification, especially for lunar festivals, which can differ by a day from the central list. 

How to check state-wise holidays for 2026 

• Visit your state’s General Administration Department (GAD) website for the official gazette notification. 
• Check the state Labour Department for holidays mandated under the Shops & Establishments Act. 
• For banks, refer to the RBI holiday list, which is state-specific and differs from office holidays. 

Gazetted vs Restricted vs Optional: Decoding HR’s Holiday Jargon 

Building Your 2026 Company Holiday Policy (Without a Single Email Thread) 

1. Start with the non-negotiables: Republic Day, Independence Day and Gandhi Jayanti, plus whatever your state law requires. 
2. Map festivals to your people, not to HQ: a Chennai team and a Lucknow team need different calendars. Create location-wise lists. 
3. Decide the weekend rule in writing: if a holiday falls on a Saturday or Sunday, is it lost, shifted or replaced by a floater? 
4. Set the sandwich rule: will leave taken on both sides of a holiday or weekend count the days in between? Write it down before someone tests it. 
5. Publish early and automate: load the calendar into your HRMS leave management system so balances, approvals and payroll pick it up on their own. 

Let Software Do the Remembering 

Spreadsheets forget. Your team doesn’t. When a holiday is entered in one place and forgotten in another, you get wrongly marked absences, inflated leave deductions and a very confused payroll run. 

HROne keeps it simple: set location-wise holiday calendars once, and they flow straight into leave balances, shift rosters and payroll. Restricted holidays and floaters get applied, approved and tracked in the app. Pair it with HROne’s attendance management system and holidays never show up as absents again. Sandwich rules, weekend shifts, regional lists: what you hate, handled.