India Holidays 2026 and 2027: A Guide for Companies With Offshore Staff

By Neej Parikh, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Exordiom. Updated October 2026.

TL;DR

India has three national holidays that every employer must observe: Republic Day (January 26), Independence Day (August 15), and Gandhi Jayanti (October 2). Everything else is set at two levels: the central government publishes a list of 17 gazetted holidays for its own offices, and each state notifies the festival holidays private employers must give, which brings the legal minimum to about 7 to 9 paid holidays in most states. If your India team works a holiday, most state laws entitle them to twice their wages, or their normal wages plus a paid day off later. Exordiom treats every person it hires as part of your in-house team, so each client decides whether their India staff follow the Indian calendar, the US calendar, or a combination, and we recommend 18 days of paid time off on top.

What are the national holidays in India?

Exordiom recruits and employs full-time staff in India and the Philippines for US companies, and the first thing new clients ask is which days their India team will be offline. Only three days are fixed for everyone in the country:

Every other holiday depends on the state your team works in and the festival days your employer picks from that state's annual notification.

What are the India holidays in 2026?

The central government's holiday list is the closest thing India has to a national calendar, and most companies build theirs from it. These are the 17 gazetted holidays for central government offices in Delhi, set by Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) Office Memorandum No. 12/2/2023-JCA, dated July 3, 2025.

Diwali falls on a Sunday in 2026, so most private employers give the nearest working day instead. Check your team's state list for the exact date.

What are the India holidays in 2027?

DoPT Office Memorandum No. 12/2/2023-JCA, dated July 16, 2026, sets the 2027 list. The four Islamic holidays depend on the sighting of the moon and can move by a day at short notice.

Six of the 2027 holidays fall on a weekend, and the government does not move them to a weekday, so a Monday to Friday team loses fewer days than in 2026.

How many holidays must a private employer give in India?

Far fewer than 17. Private companies are not bound by the central government list. Each state's National and Festival Holidays law sets the minimum: the national holidays, plus a number of festival holidays the employer chooses from the state's notification. These are the rules for the states where most US companies hire, from each state's 2026 notification.

Most employers give more than the legal minimum, publishing a company list each January that covers the big festivals their team actually celebrates.

Which Indian holidays matter most for a US team?

India does not have a single holiday season the way the US has late December. The pressure points are spread through the year and vary by region.

• Diwali. The biggest festival of the year, and the one where people travel home. Expect lighter coverage for most of that week, not just the day itself. In 2027 it falls on Friday, October 29.
• Holi and Dussehra. Both are near-universal days off. In 2027, Holi is Tuesday, March 23.
• Regional festivals. Pongal matters most in Tamil Nadu, Onam in Kerala, Ganesh Chaturthi in Maharashtra, and Durga Puja in West Bengal. If your team sits in one city, ask which local festival matters most there.
• The moon-sighting holidays. Id-ul-Fitr, Id-ul-Zuha, Muharram, and Milad-un-Nabi can shift by a day with only a day or two of notice, so leave slack around them.

December is the quiet one. Christmas Day is the only holiday that month, which makes an India team useful cover while your US team is out.

What do you pay when your India team works a holiday?

Under most state laws, an employee who works a national or festival holiday can choose between twice their normal wages for the day, or their normal wages plus a paid substitute day off, usually taken within a set window. The exact rule varies by state, as the table above shows.

Two more things US companies should know:

• There is no nationwide night-shift premium. Unlike the Philippines, India does not set a legal pay uplift for night work, though many employers pay a shift allowance for late hours. India Standard Time is 9.5 hours ahead of US Eastern in summer and 10.5 hours ahead in winter, so a full Eastern overlap means working well into the Indian night. Most teams settle on a few hours of shared time instead; see our guide to India and US time zone overlap.
• Night-shift rules for women vary by state. Several state laws allow women to work late shifts only with safeguards such as written consent and safe transport home.

As the employer of record, Exordiom runs payroll and compliance in India, so holiday pay, substitute days, and state rules are handled correctly without your finance team having to learn them.

Should offshore staff in India follow Indian holidays or US holidays?

There is no single right answer, which is why we let each client decide. Only Christmas Day appears on both the US federal calendar and India's central list.

How Exordiom handles holidays and paid time off

Our position is the same in India as in the Philippines: treat the people Exordiom hires for you as in-house, not as a vendor's staff. These are skilled professionals we recruit specifically for your team. The closer they sit to how your company actually operates, including its rhythms, its rituals, and its days off, the better the alignment, the better the output, and the longer they stay. We have written about why that parity matters in what quality parity with an in-house team really takes.

That is why holidays are the client's call, not ours. You choose whether your India team maps to US holidays, Indian holidays, or a combination, and we set up the calendar and payroll to match. Many clients go the extra mile when their team works an Indian holiday, and given the choice, many of our people choose to work it and take the extra pay.

On paid time off, we recommend 18 days a year for India hires, accrued through the year, which works out to 1.5 days a month, on top of public holidays. The reasoning is simple. We ask companies to hire these people as skilled professionals who are fully integrated into the work and the organization, culturally and professionally, and we hold them to the same hiring bar as a US employee. If the bar is the same, the time off should be comparable too. Against everything a strong hire delivers, 18 days is a small price to pay for keeping them.

---

FAQ

How many public holidays are there in India in 2027? The central government lists 17 gazetted holidays for its Delhi offices in 2027, under DoPT Office Memorandum No. 12/2/2023-JCA dated July 16, 2026. Private employers follow their state's law instead, which typically requires 7 to 9 paid holidays including the three national holidays.

What are the three national holidays in India? Republic Day on January 26, Independence Day on August 15, and Gandhi Jayanti on October 2. They are mandatory for every employer in the country.

Do private companies in India have to follow the government holiday list? No. The central list applies to central government offices. Private employers follow their state's National and Festival Holidays law, which sets a minimum number of national and festival holidays, and most publish their own company list each year.

What happens if an employee in India works on a public holiday? In most states they can choose twice their normal wages, or their normal wages plus a paid substitute day off taken within a set period. The exact rule depends on the state.

How much paid time off do employees in India get? It depends on the state and the employer. Exordiom recommends 18 days of paid time off a year for India hires, on top of public holidays, so they get time off comparable to the US colleagues they work alongside.

When is Diwali in 2026 and 2027? Diwali is Sunday, November 8, 2026, and Friday, October 29, 2027. Some states observe it a day earlier, on Naraka Chaturdasi.

The decision rule

If your India team faces your US customers in real time, start with a combination calendar: keep the three national holidays plus Diwali, Holi, and Dussehra, work the rest with holiday pay or a substitute day, and add Thanksgiving. If the work is async, follow the Indian calendar for their state. Either way, set 18 days of paid time off, publish the holiday list in January, and treat the team like the rest of your company.

Sources: DoPT Office Memoranda No. 12/2/2023-JCA dated July 3, 2025 (2026 holidays) and July 16, 2026 (2027 holidays), as published by GConnect for 2026 and for 2027; state National and Festival Holidays notifications for 2026, as compiled by AKM Global. For the Philippines equivalent, see our guide to Philippine holidays for offshore staff.

---

Talk to us about building your India team →