International Women’s Day 2027: 27 Countries Off

In short: International Women’s Day 2027 falls on Monday 8 March, so every country that treats it as a public holiday gets a three-day weekend without needing a substitute day. Our 2027 calendars list it as a national holiday in 27 of the 192 countries we track, and 10 of those also close on 9 March for Eid al-Fitr.

21 October 2026 — The date is easy to look up; the country list is not. This article answers both for International Women’s Day 2027, using the same country calendars that feed the 2027 global holiday calendar. Every entry below is a real day off, because we count only National, Substitute and Bank days. Observance entries are excluded, so this list is much shorter than the long roll-calls of awareness days published elsewhere.

When is International Women’s Day 2027?

International Women’s Day 2027 is on Monday 8 March. That single fact does most of the work in this article. Because the date lands on the first working day of the week, no country in our data needs to move it or add a day in lieu. Nobody has to decide whether the holiday should be taken on the Friday before or the Tuesday after.

The date itself has been fixed at 8 March for more than a century, and the United Nations has marked it on that day since 1975. What varies is not the date but the legal status. In some countries it is a paid statutory holiday. In many more it is officially recognised but not a day off, and only the first group appears in the tables below.

Weekday rotation matters more than most readers expect. The date fell on a Saturday in 2025, a Sunday in 2026 and a Monday in 2027. It will be a Wednesday in 2028. Each shift changes how many countries add a substitute day, which is why International Women’s Day 2027 produces a different set of long weekends from the two years before it.

Which countries give 8 March 2027 off?

Twenty-seven countries list International Women’s Day 2027 as a public holiday under a name containing “Women”. Ten are in Africa, eleven in Asia, four in Europe and two in Oceania. None is in the Americas. The table below covers all 27, with the exact entry our calendar records and the length of the break it produces.

Three conventions apply to the table. A dash in the Eid column means the country has no 9 March entry in our 2027 calendar, not that the date is a working day for everyone. “Longest break” counts Saturday and Sunday as part of the break, so a Monday holiday becomes three days even when the law grants only one. Every row is a National or Substitute entry; Observance, Religious and Regional entries are excluded from the count.

Russia is the largest of the 27, and a useful example of how the day sits inside a full calendar. It is one of Russia’s 2027 public holidays, a single Monday between Defender of the Fatherland Day in February and the May holidays. Kazakhstan treats it the same way, and the Kazakhstan 2027 dates place it roughly two weeks before Nowruz begins.

The ten countries that also get 9 March

Eid al-Fitr is listed on 9 March 2027 in 61 of the 192 countries we track, and most of those entries carry an estimate. Ten of the 61 also observe International Women’s Day 2027, which stacks the two holidays back to back. Saturday 6 March, Sunday 7, Monday 8 and Tuesday 9 make a four-day break with one day of annual leave at most, and in several cases none at all.

The ten are Burkina Faso, Chad, Eritrea, Guinea Bissau, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan. Six are African and four sit in Central Asia or the Caucasus, a pattern that follows where a statutory women’s holiday and a major Islamic feast happen to coincide. For employers with staff or suppliers in those markets, 6 to 9 March 2027 is effectively a closed window.

One caution belongs here. Eid dates depend on local moon sighting, and our calendar marks the 9 March entry as estimated for that reason. A country that announces 10 March instead would keep its four-day break but shift it by a day. Anyone booking travel should confirm against the national announcement closer to the time.

Six more countries close on 8 March for other reasons

Women’s Day is not the only reason to be closed on 8 March 2027. Six further countries have an entry on that date that has nothing to do with the observance. That brings the total number of countries with a day off on 8 March to 34 out of 192.

Two of these deserve a flag. Oman and Yemen list Eid al-Fitr on 8 March itself rather than 9 March, a one-day difference from most countries in our data. It is a reminder that the Islamic calendar is settled locally. Belize is the only country in the Americas with any 8 March entry, and its day off is a substitute for National Heroes and Benefactors Day.

Why no country in the Americas makes the list

Not one of the 35 countries we track across North and South America lists International Women’s Day 2027 as a public holiday. The day is widely marked across the region, with official events, marches and corporate campaigns. Marking a day is not the same as granting a statutory day off, and only the latter is counted here.

This is where a calendar differs from an encyclopaedia. A list of countries that “observe” the day would run to well over a hundred entries and would be useless for planning. A list of countries that close their offices is short, checkable and stable. It is also the version an HR team or a traveller can actually use.

The same logic explains the smaller surprises above. Cambodia and Laos use a different name, and several post-Soviet states grant the day as a stand-alone public holiday rather than part of a spring cluster. A handful of African countries pair it with a nearby national anniversary. Status is what matters, not the label.

Is International Women’s Day a public holiday? How we count

The honest answer is that it depends on the country, and the count depends on the rule. We count a date only when its type is National, Substitute or Bank. Entries typed Observance, Religious or Regional are excluded, so a day that is officially recognised but not a legal holiday never inflates the number.

Applied consistently, the rule gives 8 March 2027 a clear shape. Twenty-seven countries grant it as a Women’s Day holiday and one more, Tajikistan, grants the same date as Mother’s Day. Six are closed for unrelated reasons. Substitute entries count as public holidays because the day off is real, which is why the 2026 comparison below changes the picture for the same 27 countries.

Two disclosures belong with these numbers. Our 2027 calendars are built country by country, and a country that adds or moves a holiday after publication will be out of date until the page is refreshed. Where a national gazette and our entry disagree, the gazette wins. The country page is the place to check.

What changed between 2026 and 2027

In 2026, 8 March fell on a Sunday, and eleven of the 27 countries added a Monday 9 March substitute. The eleven were Azerbaijan, Burkina Faso, Chad, Kazakhstan, Kiribati, Laos, Nauru, Sierra Leone, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Zambia. The other sixteen granted nothing extra, so the holiday vanished into the weekend.

In 2027 the position reverses. Because International Women’s Day 2027 falls on a Monday, not one of the 27 needs a substitute, and the holiday becomes a clean three-day weekend everywhere on the list. For payroll and shift planning, 2027 is the easier year. 2026 was the year that produced an extra paid day in a fifth of the countries concerned.

The pattern is worth keeping for later years. A Saturday date usually costs employers nothing, while a Sunday date triggers substitutes in some jurisdictions. A midweek date can force a choice between the actual day and a moved one. Only the Monday case, which 2027 provides, is uniform across all 27.

Three names for the same date

International Women’s Day 2027 appears under three names in our calendars. Eighteen countries use the full “International Women’s Day”. Seven use the shorter “Women’s Day” — Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Eritrea, Madagascar, Uganda and Uzbekistan. Cambodia and Laos file it as “International Women’s Rights Day”, and the Cambodia 2027 public holidays page keeps that wording.

Tajikistan is the outlier that most often gets missed. Its 8 March entry is Mother’s Day, not Women’s Day, and it is a full national holiday in the Tajikistan 2027 holiday list. Anyone counting closures by keyword alone will miss it, and anyone counting by date will not.

The naming also splits the regional picture. Central Asia and the Caucasus tend to use the short form and treat the day as a family holiday. Southeast Asia uses the rights framing, and southern and eastern Africa mostly follows the international name. None of this changes the date, but it changes what a search box will find.

Planning around 8 March 2027

For International Women’s Day 2027, Friday 5 March is a normal working day in all 27 countries. The break therefore starts on Saturday rather than stretching back into the working week. Only Bangladesh and Vanuatu have a 5 March entry in our calendar, and neither observes Women’s Day, so the two facts never combine into a longer weekend.

For the ten countries with Eid on 9 March, the practical window is 6 to 9 March. Expect government offices, banks and many small businesses in West and Central Africa to be shut across all four days. Plan approvals, payments and shipments accordingly. In the seventeen remaining countries a single Monday is lost, and Tuesday resumes normally.

For travel, the difference between three and four days is the whole story. A Monday holiday adds a long weekend to a destination without adding a peak season. The four-day overlap in those ten countries coincides with one of the busiest travel periods of the Islamic year. Country-level detail sits in public holidays across Asia and public holidays in Africa, and Ukraine’s single Monday is listed with Ukraine 2027 public holidays.

Public Holiday Calendar editorial team
privacy@publicholidaycalendar.com

About Public Holiday Calendar

Public Holiday Calendar publishes public holiday dates for 192 countries. Each country and year has its own page, and every entry is typed National, Substitute, Bank, Observance, Religious or Regional so the counting rule stays visible. Dates come from national gazettes, government announcements and official calendar sources. Each country page is the record of what we currently hold.

Contact

Corrections are welcome and usually the fastest way to improve a page. If a national announcement changes a 2027 date, or your country’s entry for 8 March looks wrong, write to privacy@publicholidaycalendar.com. Include the country, the date and a link to the official source. We update the country page and the year page together.