Sri Lanka public holidays
Sri Lanka's gazetted holiday calendar for 2026, as published by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. Each day is classified Bank (B), Public (P) and/or Mercantile (M) — the three categories carry different legal consequences and not every holiday is all three.
| Current value | 26 days held |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2026-01-01 |
| In force until | 2026-12-31 |
| Official source | Central Bank of Sri Lanka — 'Central Bank of Sri Lanka - Bank Holidays for 2026' (official consolidated Bank / Public / Mercantile holiday table for calendar year 2026) |
| Last verified | 2026-07-24 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
26 gazetted entries on 25 distinct dates — 1 May 2026 carries TWO separate holidays (Vesak Full Moon Poya Day and May Day), which is why a naive row count and a date count disagree. THE POYA SYSTEM is what makes Sri Lanka's calendar unusually long: every full moon is a Poya Day and is a Bank and Public holiday, so roughly twelve holidays a year exist for no other reason. 2026 is an ADHIKA (intercalary) year in the Sinhala lunar calendar and therefore has THIRTEEN Poya days, not twelve — an extra 'Adhi Poson' Poya on 30 May 2026 sits between Vesak (1 May) and Poson (29 June). Do not assume twelve. Add the day AFTER Vesak (2 May 2026), and Buddhist observance alone accounts for 14 of the 26 entries. CATEGORY MATTERS — the three classes are not interchangeable: B = Bank Holiday (banks and the Central Bank close; all Saturdays and Sundays are also bank holidays, which is why weekend Poyas still appear in the list), P = Public Holiday (government offices close), M = Mercantile Holiday (private-sector shops and offices close with pay, under the Shop and Office Employees (Regulation of Employment and Remuneration) Act). Only EIGHT of the 26 are Mercantile: Thai Pongal, Independence Day, the two Sinhala & Tamil New Year days, May Day, the day following Vesak, Milad-Un-Nabi and Christmas. A private-sector payroll that treats all 26 as paid holidays will overstate the entitlement badly; one that treats all 26 as bank-settlement days will get value dates wrong in the other direction. MOVEABLE DATES: the Islamic dates (Id-Ul-Fitre 21 Mar, Id-Ul-Allah 28 May, Milad-Un-Nabi 26 Aug) are gazetted in advance but in practice are confirmed by moon sighting and have historically been shifted by one day at short notice; Poya dates are astronomically fixed. NO Monday-transfer rule exists — holidays falling on a weekend (7 of the 26 in 2026: 3 Jan, 1 Feb, 15 Feb, 21 Mar, 2 May, 30 May, 26 Sep, 25 Oct, 8 Nov) are simply absorbed, with no substitute day. This list is the Central Bank's own published table; the underlying instrument is the annual Gazette Extraordinary issued by the Ministry of Public Administration, whose site (pubad.gov.lk) exposed no 2026 holiday circular at confirmation.
Get it programmatically
curl https://asiaref.dev/v1/lk/public-holidays
# Free.
# History: curl https://asiaref.dev/v1/lk/public-holidays/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://asiaref.dev/provenance/lk/public-holidaysOther Sri Lanka series: policy interest rate · VAT rate · minimum wage · inflation rate (CPI) · corporate tax rate · income tax rates