Public holidays in Southeast Asia

Published 2026-08-04 · last checked 2026-08-04 · written and calculated in-house by timedatelive

Southeast Asia has the most varied set of public holiday rules of any region, and the variation is not in the dates — it is in what a holiday is. The Philippines runs two legally distinct classes of holiday with different pay rules. Indonesia adds government-declared bridge days on top of the gazetted list. Thailand substitutes a weekday when a holiday lands on a weekend. Singapore and Malaysia do the same but by different statutes, and Malaysia layers state holidays on top of federal ones.

The short answer

If you are planning around a date here, the country's rule matters more than the calendar. A single gazetted holiday in Indonesia can become four consecutive days off once joint leave is declared.

How many public holidays each country has in 2026

The 8 countries in Southeast Asia hold between 8 and 23 nationwide public holidays in 2026. The median for the group is 15, above the median of 13 across all 100 countries we track. Thailand has the most at 23; Laos has the fewest at 8.

Across 7 of the 8 countries in the group, 50 named holidays are set by a calendar other than the Gregorian one. We can tell because they land on a different day in 2027: Indonesia has the most, at 12.

Country	2026 holidays	On a weekday	Holidays that move	Guide and cities
🇹🇭 Thailand	23	20	6	Guide · Bangkok · Chiang Mai · Ko Pha Ngan · Ko Samui · Phuket
🇰🇭 Cambodia	21	18	3	Guide · Battambang · Kampot · Phnom Penh · Siem Reap · Sihanoukville
🇵🇭 Philippines	20	18	7	Guide · Boracay · Cebu · Davao · Manila · Siargao
🇮🇩 Indonesia	17	13	12	Guide · Canggu · Jakarta · Ubud · Uluwatu · Yogyakarta
🇲🇾 Malaysia	14	11	9	Guide · George Town · Johor Bahru · Kota Kinabalu · Kuala Lumpur · Langkawi
🇸🇬 Singapore	11	7	6	Guide · Holland Village · Katong & East Coast · Sentosa · Singapore (CBD) · Tiong Bahru
🇻🇳 Vietnam	11	10	7	Guide · Da Nang · Hanoi · Ho Chi Minh City · Hoi An · Nha Trang
🇱🇦 Laos	8	7	0	Guide · Luang Prabang · Pakse · Savannakhet · Vang Vieng · Vientiane

Nationwide public holidays in 2026, ranked. “On a weekday” counts those falling Monday to Friday. “Holidays that move” counts named holidays that fall on a different day in 2027 because another calendar sets them; a festival running several days counts once. Each row links the country's holiday page, its guide and the five cities we cover.

The rules that differ by country

Philippines — two classes. Regular holidays and special non-working days are set out separately in the Labor Code, and they carry different pay entitlements: work on a regular holiday is paid at a higher premium than work on a special non-working day. A list that merges the two is not wrong about the dates but is wrong about what they mean. The president also issues a proclamation each year fixing the following year's dates, so the list is confirmed annually rather than standing.

Indonesia — joint leave. Alongside the gazetted holidays, the government declares cuti bersama, collective leave days that bridge a holiday to the nearest weekend. These are announced by joint ministerial decree, usually late in the preceding year, and they are what turn Eid into a week rather than a day. They are not in most holiday datasets.

Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia — substitution. All three grant a substitute weekday when a public holiday falls on a weekend, so the number of days actually taken off is stable from year to year even though the calendar shifts. Malaysia additionally has state-level holidays that apply in some states and not others, so there is no single national list.

Vietnam — Tet dominates. Lunar New Year is several consecutive public days, dated by the lunar calendar, and it moves through late January and February from year to year. Any Vietnamese holiday list without Tet on it is missing the largest holiday in the country by a wide margin.

Cambodia and Laos both centre on the lunar and solar new year in April — Khmer New Year and Pi Mai — which run for several days and are the point in the year when business genuinely stops.

What these counts mean, and what they do not. A day is counted here when it is a public holiday across the whole country. Regional and state holidays are excluded, which is the only way to make a hundred countries comparable to one another — but it means a federal country's number is lower than what a resident of any one region actually gets. Switzerland shows 4 because that is what applies confederation-wide; cantonal holidays add several more wherever you live. The same applies to Canada, Germany, Spain, Australia and the United States. A count is also not an entitlement: whether a public holiday is a paid day off is set by employment law and by your contract, not by the calendar.

How this page was built. Holiday dates are computed from each country's own rules by the python-holidays library, restricted to the statutory public category, for the 100 countries this site covers. Countries are partitioned by region so that each appears on exactly one regional page. Where a holiday falls at a weekend and the law grants a substitute weekday, the substitute and the original are counted as one holiday; where the law moves the holiday instead of adding a day, as Colombia's Ley Emiliani does, the moved date is the one that counts. Islamic dates that depend on sighting the new moon are marked estimated. The totals were cross-checked against the independent Nager.Date dataset for the 82 countries it covers: 33 match exactly, 50 are within one day and the median difference is 1. Sources are listed on data sources; the wider method is on methodology.

Common follow-up questions

Which Southeast Asian country has the most public holidays?

Thailand, with 23 nationwide public holidays in 2026, ahead of Cambodia on 21 and the Philippines on 20. Laos has the fewest of the eight at 8. Those figures count days observed across the whole country and exclude Malaysia's state holidays and Indonesia's declared joint-leave days, both of which add several more in practice. Cambodia is often cited as having the longest list in the world; that was true before the royal decrees that cut it.

What is cuti bersama?

Indonesian collective leave: government-declared days that bridge a public holiday to the weekend, announced by joint ministerial decree. They are why an Indonesian public holiday often becomes several consecutive days off.

What is the difference between a regular holiday and a special non-working day in the Philippines?

Both are days off, but they carry different pay rules under the Labor Code. Work performed on a regular holiday attracts a higher premium than work on a special non-working day, and the entitlement when the day is not worked differs too.