Vanuatu public holidays
National public holidays under the Public Holidays Act [CAP 114], read with section 23 of the Employment Act [CAP 160] (work on public holidays), calendar year 2026. Fourteen fixed and movable national days, plus a Monday substitute where a listed day falls on a Sunday. Provincial days are separate and are not in this list.
| Current value | 28 days held |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2026-01-01 |
| In force until | 2026-12-31 |
| Official source | Public Holidays Act [CAP 114] as summarised in the Vanuatu Department of Labour, Industrial Relations Unit 'Public Holiday Brochure' — statutory list of the fourteen Official National Public Holidays, the section 2 power of the President (on the Prime Minister's advice) to declare additional days, and the section 3 Sunday-substitution rule |
| Last verified | 2026-07-30 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
STATUTORY LIST (Public Holidays Act [CAP 114]): New Year's Day (1 Jan), Lini Day (21 Feb), Custom Chiefs' Day (5 Mar), Good Friday, Easter Monday, Labour Day (1 May), Ascension Day, Children's National Day (24 Jul), Independence Day (30 Jul), Assumption Day (15 Aug), Constitution Day (5 Oct), National Unity Day (29 Nov), Christmas Day (25 Dec), Family Day (26 Dec). MOVABLE DAYS IN 2026: Easter Sunday is 5 April 2026, so Good Friday is 3 April, Easter Monday 6 April, and Ascension Day (39 days after Easter Sunday) is Thursday 14 May 2026. Ascension is the one most often got wrong — it was 9 May in 2024 and 13 May in the undated Department of Labour brochure; it is NOT a fixed date. SUBSTITUTION RULE (s.3): 'When any of the days stated is a Sunday the following Monday shall be a public holiday, and when Family Day falls upon a Monday the day following shall be a public holiday.' In 2026 exactly one day triggers it — National Unity Day, 29 November 2026, is a Sunday, so Monday 30 November 2026 is the public holiday; the statutory date is shown in the entry name. The rule covers SUNDAYS ONLY: Lini Day (21 Feb 2026), Assumption Day (15 Aug 2026) and Family Day (26 Dec 2026) all fall on SATURDAYS in 2026 and are NOT moved or compensated. Family Day does not fall on a Monday in 2026, so the second limb of s.3 is not engaged. PRESIDENTIAL DAYS: under s.2 the President, acting on the advice of the Prime Minister, may declare further public holidays at any time (commonly for elections, state funerals and national events) — this list cannot be treated as closed for the year. PROVINCIAL HOLIDAYS (NOT national, observed only by people working and residing in the province concerned, and deliberately excluded from the list above): Shefa Day 18 June, Penama Day 16 September, Sanma Day 24 September, Torba Day 2 October, Tafea Day 8 October, Malampa Day 10 October. PAY AND WORK RULES: under s.23 Employment Act [CAP 160] no employee may be required to work on a Sunday or public holiday unless they volunteer, except in listed essential undertakings (transport of passengers and goods by road/sea/air and handling at docks, quays, wharves, warehouses and airports; public utilities — water, gas, electricity, postal and telecommunications, sewerage; hotels, guest houses, bars, restaurants and clubs; theatres and places of public amusement; hospitals and clinics; radio, newspaper and television; animal husbandry). Overtime on a public holiday or Sunday is paid at 1.5x the normal hourly rate (s.26). Section 7 of the Public Holidays Act permits limited retail on holidays: drugs and medicines; bread, butter, fresh milk, fresh meat, fresh fish and ice up to noon; refreshments consumed on the premises. ACCESS: there is no machine-readable consolidated text of the Public Holidays Act [CAP 114] on a Vanuatu government site — the Department of Labour publishes only the two-page Industrial Relations brochure cited here, which reproduces the list and quotes ss.2, 3 and 7. The Department of Customs and Inland Revenue does publish a dated bilingual holiday table (https://customsinlandrevenue.gov.vu/index.php/public-holidays) but it is STALE — as at 23 July 2026 it still shows 'Vanuatu Public Holidays - 2024'. Do not point a source-watcher at it expecting the current year; it is useful only as corroboration of the fourteen-day list and of Ascension's movability. No 2026 annual Gazette notice listing the year's holidays could be retrieved: the Official Gazette is not published in searchable form on any gov.vu site, and the Gazette PDFs that do appear on dol.gov.vu are scanned images with no extractable text. 2027 EXTENSION (2026-07-30): the Public Holidays Act [Cap. 114] list. CORRECTION TO A COMMON ASSUMPTION: s.3 substitutes SUNDAY occurrences only - 'When any of the days stated is a Sunday the following Monday shall be a public holiday' - so a Saturday holiday is NOT moved. That matters in 2027, where Labour Day (1 May), Children's National Day (24 July) and Christmas Day (25 December) all fall on Saturdays and stay put, while Father Walter Lini Day, Assumption and Family Day each move to the following Monday from a Sunday. The separate s.3 limb making the day after Family Day a holiday when Family Day falls on a Monday is not triggered. Ascension Day is Easter-relative (6 May 2027). Provincial days are public holidays only within their province and are not listed. The President may declare additional one-off holidays under s.2.
Get it programmatically
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# Free.
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