Indian Festival Dates 2027: Diwali, Holi and Long Weekends

In short: Diwali 2027 falls on Friday 29 October and Holi on Monday 22 March. India’s 2027 calendar sets aside 18 dates as public holidays, and two of them sit at the front of a natural weekend — which gives the year four breaks of three days or more.

19 October 2026 — Every date below comes from our India 2027 public holidays page and is checked against published festival calendars. This guide lists the indian festival dates 2027 that become public holidays, gives each one a weekday, sets out which of them produce a long weekend, and marks the three that are still estimates.

Which indian festival dates 2027 are public holidays?

The indian festival dates 2027 that carry legal weight mix civic anniversaries with religious festivals. In 2027 that comes to 18 dates, counted on the same basis we use across the site: a day counts only when its type is National, Substitute or Bank. Observances and regional days are left out, so the figure is smaller than the long restricted-holiday list many offices circulate.

Three of the 18 are national anniversaries — Republic Day, Independence Day and Gandhi Jayanti. The other fifteen follow the Hindu, Islamic and Sikh calendars. Two different timing systems decide them, which is why some dates can be written down years ahead and others cannot.

Seven of the eighteen land on a Saturday or a Sunday, which is a high share even for a calendar this crowded. Those dates still count as public holidays, but they hand back less free time, and the list above makes that visible before anyone plans around them.

Diwali 2027: Friday 29 October

The best-known entry in any indian festival dates 2027 list is Diwali, which falls on Friday 29 October, the new-moon night of the Hindu month of Kartika and the evening of Lakshmi Puja. Rounding it to “late October” is fair, but the exact date still matters: in 2026 the festival landed on a Sunday, and this time it arrives ten days earlier in the month.

The celebration is a five-day block rather than one date. It opens with Dhanteras on Wednesday 27 October, runs through Naraka Chaturdashi on Thursday, peaks on Friday, and closes with Govardhan Puja on Saturday 30 October and Bhai Dooj the day after. India’s calendar marks one of those days as public: Friday the 29th.

That shape of the indian festival dates 2027 is unusually kind to anyone travelling. The main evening sits at the front of a natural weekend, so two days of annual leave — Thursday 28 October and Monday 1 November — stretch that block to six days off in a row. For anyone visiting family in another state, 2027 is the year to book early.

Holi 2027: Monday 22 March

Holi 2027 falls on Monday 22 March, which makes it the other easy break in the indian festival dates 2027. The main day of colour follows Holika Dahan on the evening before, when bonfires are lit across northern India. Because the holiday itself is a Monday, the weekend runs straight into it with no leave at all.

The date moves because Holi is tied to the full moon of Phalguna, the closing lunar month of the Hindu year. That keeps the festival inside a window from late February to late March: 2026 fell on 4 March, 2027 lands on 22 March, and 2028 slips back to 11 March. Two neighbouring years can sit almost five weeks apart.

Treat this entry as a nationwide closure rather than a regional observance. Government offices, banks and most schools shut on the main day, and public transport in the big cities runs a reduced holiday timetable. Many businesses also close on the afternoon of Holika Dahan.

Which 2027 holidays create a long weekend?

Indian festival dates 2027 only become time off when they sit next to a weekend. We count a long weekend when public holidays plus the surrounding weekend add up to at least three consecutive days, and we count each run once, so a stretch covering two festivals is a single break. On that basis India gets four in 2027 — fewer than the crowd of Monday and Friday dates might suggest.

Only two of the indian festival dates 2027 actually fall on a Monday or a Friday: Holi on 22 March and Diwali on 29 October. Every other long weekend in the table below happens because a Sunday or Saturday holiday shares its weekend with an adjacent weekday.

The year’s length is decided in March and May. Two of the four breaks fall in the same week of March, and the third arrives in mid-May, so an unlucky scheduler loses most of the year’s easy time in the first five months.

Two of the indian festival dates 2027 sit only three working days apart in March. Taking Tuesday 23, Wednesday 24 and Thursday 25 March off turns 20–28 March into nine consecutive days for three days of annual leave — the best-value bridge in the whole 2027 calendar.

Two more totals may look thin. Independence Day on 15 August falls on a Sunday, so the most it can do is anchor a Saturday-to-Monday stretch if you take the Monday; the same is true of Guru Nanak’s Birthday on 14 November. Neither produces three days without leave.

Gandhi Jayanti and Dussehra come closest to a second bridge. They fall on 2 and 9 October, both Saturdays, and four annual-leave days in between would turn 2–10 October into nine days off. That is a leave-driven plan rather than a holiday-driven one, but it is worth flagging.

Why some 2027 dates are still estimates

Three entries — Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha and Ashura — carry an estimated label. All three follow the Islamic lunar calendar, whose months begin with the sighting of a new crescent moon, and a sighting cannot be predicted with certainty months ahead.

The uncertainty has a practical cost for anyone reading indian festival dates 2027 as if they were fixed. A date pencilled in for a Wednesday can be confirmed as a Tuesday or a Thursday, and that shift decides whether the holiday produces a long weekend at all. Our calendar keeps the label visible rather than presenting a guess as a settled fact.

Independence Day 2027 carries a second labelled item: the estimated Prophet’s Birthday shares 15 August. The pair counts as one public holiday, which is why the year totals 18 rather than 19. Nothing in the list is inflated by double-counting a shared day.

Which other countries close for Diwali in 2027?

The indian festival dates 2027 spread beyond one country’s borders. India is not alone in treating the festival as a legal day off. Across our 2027 country calendars, Diwali or Deepavali appears as a public holiday in eight other countries, and the date is not the same in all of them.

Singapore, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname and Guyana each record Thursday 28 October, a day before India. Fiji sets the same 28 October but still carries an estimated flag. Mauritius uses Friday 29 October, matching India. Myanmar records Saturday 30 October.

The split in indian festival dates 2027 has a cause: the main observance is tied to pradosh kaal, an evening window calculated from local sunset. Move east or west and the lunar day can fall on the neighbouring civil date, so the holiday shifts with the time zone rather than the festival.

If Diwali is an ordinary working day where you are, check your own country’s page instead of assuming the Indian date carries over. Our Diwali 2026 guide shows how the same spread across countries worked a year earlier, when nine calendars listed the day.

How many paid days off does 2027 deliver?

A date on the indian festival dates 2027 list is not the same as a day away from work. Count only the dates that fall on a weekday, and the 18 public holidays shrink to 11 — the other seven sit on a Saturday or a Sunday and cost employers nothing.

That gap is why “India has 18 public holidays” and “India gives about 11 working days off” can both be true in the same year. Neither statement is wrong; they answer different questions, and mixing them is the commonest error in comparisons between countries.

Mid-week placement shifts from year to year, and it changes the usable total far more than the headline figure suggests. In 2027 Republic Day falls on a Tuesday but Christmas lands on a Saturday, so two of the most anticipated dates in the indian festival dates 2027 table pay out very differently.

Look at the months rather than the list. September 2027 contains no public holiday at all, while October carries three in four weeks and the second half of March carries two in seven days. A calendar built on lunar months and the Gregorian year cannot spread itself evenly.

Hindu festivals track a lunisolar calendar, so they slip against the Gregorian year by roughly eleven days a year until a leap month corrects the drift. That is why Holi sits in early March one year and late March the next, and why Dussehra and Diwali bunch together in October.

How to plan around the 2027 Indian festival calendar

Once the indian festival dates 2027 are on paper, book long-distance transport first. The Diwali window from 29 October to 1 November and the March holiday cluster fill up months ahead, and domestic fares in India climb steeply once the dates are widely known. Waiting for a confirmed estimate rarely saves money.

Then check the state you are visiting before treating the indian festival dates 2027 as final. Our 18 dates are counted nationally; several states add regional days of their own, and a few close on a different day for the same festival. A regional holiday can turn a three-day break into four, or close an office on a day this list shows as open.

Finally, keep refundability on everything that depends on an estimate. The three Islamic dates are the ones most likely to move by a day, and a booking that hinges on a specific Tuesday or Wednesday is the one most exposed to that change.

For a month-by-month view of the year, the India 2027 public holidays page carries the full national list with each date typed. To see how India’s 18 compare with the rest of the world, read which country has the most public holidays.

Festival travellers often work backwards from a single date on the indian festival dates 2027 list. If Diwali is the anchor, the useful question is not only when the main night falls but which neighbouring days are working days — and in 2027 the answer is unusually generous, with a Friday festival and a Monday holiday in the same year.

Employers in India face the mirror image of that problem when they read the indian festival dates 2027 as a staffing plan: leave requests pile up in the same short windows every time. With seven of the 18 dates landing on a weekend, leave requests concentrate on the remaining eleven, and the March cluster means two public holidays fall within four working days of each other. Staffing plans written in January tend to underestimate that week.

Schools and universities follow a slightly different rhythm again, even when the indian festival dates 2027 match the published list exactly. Their calendars usually quote the same festivals but add vacation periods that the national list does not cover, so a family trip planned from this table alone can miss a term break entirely — or collide with one.

The full Indian festival calendar 2027 at a glance

Read together, the indian festival dates 2027 describe a year with two busy seasons. January to April carries seven holidays, including the two that create long weekends in March. May to August carries five more, then a quiet September is followed by a dense October and November.

The indian festival dates 2027 close in December with a single date, Christmas on a Saturday. Anyone planning a winter trip should know in advance that 25 December 2027 adds nothing beyond its own weekend, which means the last long break of the year ends on 31 October.

Dates in the indian festival dates 2027 list are the skeleton, not the whole plan. Local closures, exam schedules and regional additions all matter for a real trip, and each of them is better checked against a state or city source than inferred from a national list.

Public Holiday Calendar editorial team
privacy@publicholidaycalendar.com

About Public Holiday Calendar

Public Holiday Calendar publishes indian festival dates 2027 and holiday dates for 192 countries, with each entry typed as National, Substitute, Bank, Observance, Religious or Regional so the scope of every number stays visible. Festival dates that depend on a moon sighting are published as estimates until they are confirmed.

Contact

Found a date that does not match your country’s official announcement of the indian festival dates 2027? Write to privacy@publicholidaycalendar.com with the country, the year and the source. The editorial team will check it against the published calendar and correct the entry where the record is wrong.