UAE public holidays: what is published, and what is estimated

The seven holidays, as the Cabinet publishes them

The governing instrument is the Cabinet Resolution Concerning the Public Holidays in the State, issued 1 April 2024 and effective 1 January 2025. Article 1 covers “Public Holidays for the Public and Private Sector in the State” — one list for both.

Note the authority’s own spelling: “Arafa Day”, not Arafat Day. Article 2 allows the Cabinet to transfer any holiday except the Eids. Article 3: “The Public Holiday cannot be transferred to another day in the event it coincides with another public holiday or falls on the weekend.”

Two corrections worth making. Commemoration Day (30 November) is not in the current list — it was consolidated into the National Day period, and it should not be published as a standalone holiday. And public and private sector holidays are now the same list, under one instrument; the older framing in which they could differ is superseded. What still differs is who announces each occurrence: the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation issues the private-sector circular, and the federal government sector is announced separately.

u.ae adds one condition worth knowing: if Ramadan runs a full 30 days, that final day becomes an official Eid Al Fitr holiday.

Why no calendar exists

The Cabinet Resolution expresses the moving holidays only in Hijri terms and publishes no Gregorian conversion. u.ae carries no year-specific date table — its list is calendrical, not a calendar. Confirmed dates appear only shortly beforehand, holiday by holiday.

u.ae’s own statement is: “Islamic holidays are determined according to moon sighting.” The decision is made by the moon-sighting committee under the UAE Council for Fatwa. We could not retrieve any authority-hosted page setting out that committee’s constitution or procedure, so we treat the procedure as unpublished.

No authority has published a 2027 list. Every “official 2027 list” in circulation is press, and the more careful outlets label it as expected or predicted dates.

What actually changes, and the surprise in it

Very little is published, and the thinness is itself the story. There is no federal or Dubai page saying which services close on a public holiday. Government service centres, schools, malls, attractions and restaurants: no authority publishes a holiday closure schedule for any of them.

RTA does publish, per occurrence, and one of its publications contains a genuinely counter-intuitive fact.

• Ramadan metro hours are the same as ordinary metro hours. RTA’s Ramadan announcement of 16 February 2026 publishes Monday to Thursday 5:00am–midnight, Friday 5:00am–1:00am, Saturday 5:00am–midnight, Sunday 8:00am–midnight — line for line identical to its standard published timetable. RTA issues a Ramadan announcement; the metro does not in fact change hours for Ramadan.
• Eid does change hours. For Eid Al Adha 1446H, RTA published Red and Green Lines 5:00am to 1:00am across the holiday, tram 6:00am to 1:00am, and “Public parking will be free of charge… excluding multi-level parking terminals”.

One structural problem: RTA surfaces holiday timetables through a rotating homepage banner rather than a stable address. Its own page says “For all holidays and special occasion timetables, please visit the homepage… via the main banner”. That is why they are hard to cite and why aggregators get them wrong — and why an RTA page publishing Eid hours for 1438 AH, roughly 2017, is still live with no archive banner.

Banks are worse. The Central Bank’s live “Banks Eid Holiday” press-release page links a single PDF whose filename is Notice No. 6486/2011 — an Eid notice from 2011, still served today as the current statement, with no archive banner. No current per-holiday bank closure notice appears to exist.

Questions no authority answers

• What are next year’s Eid dates? No authority publishes forward dates.
• How much notice will there be? No published lead-time commitment. Observed: eight days for Eid Al Adha 2026.
• If a holiday falls on a weekend, is there a substitute day? Article 3 says it is not transferred; nothing explains what that means in practice.
• Will the malls be open on Eid, and at what hours? Nothing published; operators decide and few announce in advance.
• Will attractions and desert tours run? Nothing first-party.
• Are visa offices and service centres closed, and for how long? No published schedule.
• Will a bank branch or exchange house be open? The Central Bank’s live page is a 2011 notice.
• Do metro hours change on National Day or New Year’s Day? Published per occurrence via a homepage banner; non-Eid holidays are largely uncovered.
• Does Arafah Day differ practically from the rest of the Eid block? No authority distinguishes it.

Ramadan is covered separately on Ramadan in Dubai, and operator seasons on seasonal closures.

This transcribes the Cabinet Resolution and the authority pages, not employment or legal advice. The government publishes Islamic holidays as Hijri dates confirmed by moon sighting and does not pre-announce Gregorian ones — so no date here is a forecast, and any calendar that gives you one has assembled it itself.

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