Diwali 2026: Date, Days Off and 9 Countries

In short: Diwali 2026 falls on Sunday 8 November 2026, the new-moon night of the Hindu month of Kartika. Nine countries in our 2026 calendars list Diwali or Deepavali as a public holiday, and four — Singapore, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Fiji — add Monday 9 November as a substitute day off.

13 October 2026 — Every date in this guide is read from our country calendars, and Diwali 2026 has one answer that holds across India: Sunday 8 November 2026. Because the festival is tied to a lunar month, the Gregorian date shifts each year, and 2026 lands on the later side of the current run. This guide gives the Diwali 2026 date, the five days around it, which countries get the day off, and why a Sunday changes the answer — read alongside the India 2026 public holidays page that holds the full national list.

When is Diwali 2026?

The main day of Diwali 2026 is Sunday 8 November 2026. That is the new moon of Kartika, the night of Lakshmi Puja, and the date that country calendars usually record as the holiday itself. It sits in the middle of a five-day festival block that most calendars place between 6 and 10 November 2026.

Two nearby dates matter for planning. Saturday 7 November 2026 is the day before the main festival and forms part of the wider Diwali period. Monday 9 November 2026 is the day after it, and that Monday is the date four countries in our dataset list as an official substitute day.

It helps to separate the festival from the holiday. The festival lasts five days, but the days a country actually closes are narrower than that, and they differ from one country to the next. Any calendar that shows a single “Diwali 2026” date is showing the main day, not the whole season.

Why the Diwali date moves every year

Diwali follows the Hindu lunisolar calendar rather than the Gregorian one. Its main day is the new moon, or Amavasya, of the month of Kartika, which keeps the festival inside a window running from mid-October to mid-November. A lunar month is about 29.5 days long, so a lunar year falls short of the solar year and the date jumps forward and back instead of drifting slowly.

The 2026 date is nineteen days later than 2025, and then the calendar swings back the other way: Diwali 2027 arrives on 29 October, and 2028 moves earlier again to 17 October. That swing is why the festival never settles into a fixed season. For schools, employers and airlines, Diwali is a date that has to be looked up again every year, and 2026 is one of the later editions in the recent run.

The five days of Diwali

Diwali runs for five days, and each one has its own name and purpose. Dhanteras opens the period with household cleaning and the purchase of metal or gold. Naraka Chaturdashi, sometimes called Choti Diwali, follows. The middle day is the main festival of lights, with Lakshmi Puja held in the evening. Govardhan Puja and Bhai Dooj close the sequence.

Those five days do not become five public holidays. In 2026 the block sits around the main day of 8 November, and the country calendars in our dataset record only the days that are legally non-working — usually one day, and in four countries two.

Regions also disagree about which day sits at the centre. Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka keep Deepavali in the Tamil month of Aipasi, West Bengal marks Kali Puja on the same night as the northern Lakshmi Puja, and calendars differ by a day on when Govardhan Puja and Bhai Dooj fall. What stays consistent across our data is the main day: 8 November 2026.

Which countries get the day off in 2026

Nine of the 192 countries and territories we cover list Diwali or Deepavali as a public holiday in 2026. The table below gives the date recorded for each and the type of entry. National marks the holiday itself; Substitute marks a working day repaid when the holiday lands on a weekend.

Four of the nine — Singapore, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Fiji — also list Monday 9 November 2026. Those entries are typed as Substitute days, the mechanism governments use to move a holiday off a Sunday. The other five, India among them, record only the Sunday itself.

Two rows carry a caveat. Fiji’s dates are labelled estimated in our data, because the official gazette that covers 2026 had not been published when the entry was compiled; treat Fiji as provisional rather than settled. Myanmar’s page records Diwali on 10 November 2026 rather than 8 November, following its own observance convention, so the spread of dates is wider than the Indian date alone would suggest.

For the wider picture, our Asia public holidays section gathers the year pages for India, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Myanmar in one place, and the individual pages carry the full calendars: Singapore 2026 public holidays, Sri Lanka 2026 holidays and Myanmar 2026 public holidays.

The Sunday effect: why four countries add 9 November

Diwali 2026 falls on a Sunday, and that single fact decides how many days off each country grants. Where a government keeps a substitute rule, a holiday that lands on a weekend is repaid on the next working day. In 2026 that working day is Monday 9 November.

Four countries exercise the rule. Singapore, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Fiji each list Monday 9 November 2026 as a Substitute entry, which turns the festival into a three-day break running from Saturday 7 to Monday 9 November. It is the only long weekend Diwali produces in 2026.

India does not use the rule here. Its 2026 entry names Diwali on the Sunday and adds nothing for the Monday, so the holiday yields a two-day weekend rather than a long weekend. Two countries can observe the same festival on the same date and still give their workforces a different number of days off, because the substitute rule is a national choice. Our public holiday counts by country shows how far that choice can move the totals.

Diwali in India: the largest holiday calendar

India is the centre of Diwali, and its 2026 calendar is one of the fullest in our dataset: 18 public holidays, every one of them typed National, with no substitute days anywhere in the year. Diwali, recorded as Diwali (Deepavali), is one of the eighteen, sitting between Dussehra on 20 October and Guru Nanak’s Birthday on 24 November.

Because the Indian list adds no substitutes, Diwali 2026 gives Indian offices a single named holiday that happens to fall on a weekend. The surrounding season is still busy — Dussehra, Diwali and Guru Nanak’s Birthday all sit inside a seven-week stretch — but each is a standalone date rather than part of a declared block. The year-by-year picture, including 2025 and 2027, sits on the India holiday hub.

Mauritius, home to a large population of Indian descent, gives the festival similar weight. Its 2026 page lists 15 public holidays and records Diwali as a National entry on 8 November; the full year is on Mauritius 2026 holidays.

Is Deepavali the same as Diwali?

Deepavali and Diwali are two names for the same festival. Deepavali is the older form and the one used in Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada, while Diwali is the Hindi and Gujarati rendering. Both mean “a row of lamps”, and both describe the same night of the year, so neither spelling points to a different date.

The naming difference shows up in how places label the day. India’s own calendar records it as “Diwali (Deepavali)”. Sri Lanka and Fiji use Deepavali in local usage, while our country pages file the entry under Diwali so that the same festival can be compared across borders. Tamil Nadu keeps the Deepavali name and places the festival in the Tamil month of Aipasi.

So if a search for Diwali 2026 returns a “Deepavali” date instead, the two refer to the same day: 8 November 2026 in every country in our table except Myanmar, whose page records the festival two days later. That single divergence is the only place where the naming and the dating come apart in our data.

Planning around Diwali 2026

The practical shape of Diwali 2026 depends on where you are. In the four countries with a substitute day, the usable break runs Saturday 7 to Monday 9 November, and one day of leave on either side turns it into a five-day stretch. In India the holiday sits on the Sunday, so the working week is untouched and the quiet days are 9 and 10 November instead.

Two further notes are worth keeping. First, because the festival anchors a merchant and manufacturing season in India, closures and reduced hours begin before the main day rather than on it, so the working week around 8 November is thinner than the single holiday date implies. Second, the 2026 date is later than 2025 and earlier than 2027, so a schedule built around the 2025 date will not carry over.

For the rest of the year, the all 192 countries index links every country page, and each one shows the exact date, weekday and type of every holiday it records. A country that is absent from the Diwali table above can still be checked there in full, so the gap is visible rather than silent.

How we count these holidays

The dates and counts here come from the same method we apply across the site. We count a date only when it appears as a public holiday for a country — that is, when its type is National, Substitute or Bank. We exclude dates typed as Observance, Religious or Regional, which keeps commemorations and sub-national holidays out of the national count.

Three honest notes follow. First, a country absent from the list of nine is not a country where Diwali means nothing — it is a country where the day is not a national public holiday. Second, Fiji’s 2026 dates are estimated in our data and Myanmar’s entry sits two days after the Indian date; both are flagged here rather than smoothed over. Third, Malaysia is a known gap in our 2026 record: its page lists sixteen National, Substitute and Bank entries and Deepavali is not among them, so we do not count Malaysia in the table above.

National calendars also change. Dates are amended, substituted and gazetted at short notice, so any dataset is a starting point rather than the final authority. Where the picture is more complicated than a single number, we say so on the page rather than let the number stand alone.

Public Holiday Calendar editorial team
privacy@publicholidaycalendar.com

About Public Holiday Calendar

Public Holiday Calendar is an independent reference for public holidays in 192 countries and regions, with 575 year pages covering 2025, 2026 and 2027. Every country page lists the exact date, weekday and type of each holiday, so readers can see which days are National, which are Substitute days and which are bank holidays.

We count a date as a public holiday only when its type is National, Substitute or Bank. Observances, religious commemorations and regional holidays are recorded separately and excluded from our holiday totals. Where a country’s data is incomplete or a source is unavailable, we say so rather than fill the gap.

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Comments, corrections and data queries are welcome at privacy@publicholidaycalendar.com. If you spot a date that does not match an official source, send us the link and we will review it against the government publication for that country.