Good to know
- Weekly offs. The notification also declares all Sundays and every second and fourth Saturday as public holidays. Other Saturdays are working days for state offices, so 21 March and 15 August are real days off.
- Left out because they fall on a Sunday or a weekly off. The notification names Maha Shivaratri (15 February), Maharshi Valmiki Jayanti (25 October), Kannada Rajyotsava (1 November), Naraka Chaturdashi (8 November) and the second-Saturday Amavasya (10 October).
- Valmiki Jayanti, Monday 26 October 2026. One banking news site reports a notice dated 5 October 2026 that gives 26 October as a compensatory holiday for the Valmiki Jayanti that fell on a Sunday. It is not in the notification we read, so we have not counted it. Check the DPAR notice before you plan around it.
- Kodagu district only. Local holidays were declared for Kail Muhurtha (3 September, Thursday), Tula Sankramana (18 October, Sunday) and Huttari Festival (26 November, Thursday).
- Restricted holidays. The government also issued a restricted-holiday list from which employees may take any two. This page does not cover it.
- Khutba-e-Ramzan, Bakrid, Muharram and Eid Milad depend on the moon. The notification lets Muslim employees take the actual festival day if it falls on a different date.
Building your company's Karnataka calendar
If you run HR for a company with staff in Karnataka, treat this list as your starting point. Add the national days your policy gives, decide whether you offer floating holidays, say in writing what happens when a holiday falls on a weekend, and publish the final calendar before the year begins. If you have offices in several states, keep one calendar for each.
For the central government list, see Central Government holiday list 2026.
Source
Karnataka Government Notification No. DPAR 16 HHL 2025, Notification-I (list of general holidays for 2026), as reproduced by SGC Services and Sakshi Post, read on 10 November 2026. We could not open the Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms copy on the Karnataka government site, so we read the notification as reproduced in an English PDF and checked it against a Sakshi Post report dated 3 December 2025. Both list the same 20 dates and weekdays. Weekdays were checked against the calendar. Rules last reviewed 9 November 2026.