Good to know
- Onam. The Onam holidays run from 25 to 28 August, from First Onam to Fourth Onam, and with the weekend they give a long break.
- On a Sunday. Mahasivarathri (15 February), Easter (5 April) and Deepavali (8 November) fall on a Sunday and are not counted.
- Restricted holidays. Three community-specific restricted holidays exist: Ayya Vaikunda Swami Jayanthi (4 March), Avani Avittom (28 August) and Vishwakarma Day (17 September). They are for employees of those communities only and are not counted.
- One-off holiday. The Kerala Chief Electoral Officer's site carries a General Administration Department order dated 21 March 2026 declaring Thursday 9 April 2026 a public holiday for all public offices, for polling in the Legislative Assembly election. It is not part of the annual list.
- Banks. 1 April 2026 is the annual closing of accounts for banks, not a general holiday for government offices.
- Id-ul-Fitr, Id-ul-Ad'ha, Muharram and Milad-i-Sherif depend on the moon. The copies mark them as subject to change.
Building your company's Kerala calendar
If you run HR for a company with staff in Kerala, 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
Kerala Government General Administration Department list of holidays for 2026 (Gazette notification dated 31 October 2025), as published by greytHR and GoodReturns, read on 10 November 2026. We could not open the gazette on the Kerala government site. We compiled the list from two published copies (GoodReturns, which cites the General Administration Department gazette notification dated 31 October 2025, and greytHR). They agree on every date and weekday once the extra entries noted above are set aside. Neither gives a gazette number. Weekdays were checked against the calendar. Rules last reviewed 9 November 2026.