Chandigarh Public Holidays 2026

Understanding Chandigarh's Holiday Calendar in 2026

The Chandigarh Administration declares 16 public holidays for 2026 under Notification No. 6/1/1-IH(I)-2025/17488 dated 30 December 2025, alongside a 24-day restricted list from which each employee may choose any 2. A seventeenth entry on Schedule-I is a placeholder: the holiday for Sri Guru Gobind Singh Ji's birthday is to be declared separately, as announced by the Government of Punjab.

Schedule-I also declares all Sundays and all Saturdays as general holidays for public offices under the Administration. That matters more than the length of the list. A five-day week is the baseline, so the 16 named holidays cost fewer working days than the equivalent count in a state where Saturdays are working.

The practical difficulty for employers is that Chandigarh, Mohali, and Panchkula form a single labour market across three jurisdictions with three different notifications. An employee living in Mohali works under the Punjab list, one in Panchkula under Haryana's, and one in Chandigarh under the UT's. For payroll, commercial establishments fall under the Punjab Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, 1958 as extended to Chandigarh.

National Holidays in Chandigarh

The three national days sit at their fixed dates: Republic Day on Monday, January 26, Independence Day on Saturday, August 15 and Mahatma Gandhi's Birthday on Friday, October 2. Independence Day falls on a Saturday, which is already a general holiday under Schedule-I, so no working day is lost.

Chandigarh does not declare Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Jayanti on April 14 in either schedule. That date carries Vaisakhi, and Vaisakhi is on the restricted list rather than the public one, so April 14 is an ordinary working day in Chandigarh unless an employee spends one of their two restricted days on it.

Chandigarh-Specific Holidays

The 16 named public holidays are Republic Day, Holi, Id-ul-Fitr, Ram Navami, Mahavir Jayanti, Good Friday, Buddha Purnima, Id-ul-Zuha, Independence Day, Janmashtami, Gandhi Jayanti, Dussehra, Maharishi Valmiki's Birthday, Diwali, Guru Nanak's Birthday, and Christmas. That is the complete list of automatic closures.

Only one Sikh commemoration is a public holiday: Guru Nanak's Birthday on Tuesday, November 24. Sri Guru Arjan Dev's Martyrdom Day on June 18 and Sri Guru Teg Bahadur Ji's Martyrdom Day on December 14 are both restricted rather than public, a real divergence from Punjab, where the Sikh calendar carries much more weight.

Guru Gobind Singh Ji's birthday is handled by cross-reference. Schedule-I states that the holiday will be declared as announced by the Government of Punjab, so it has no fixed date in the Chandigarh notification and must be picked up from Punjab's announcement when it is made.

The Shaheedi Jor Mela at Fatehgarh Sahib appears as three consecutive restricted days on December 26, 27, and 28 rather than as public holidays. In Punjab it is a gazetted observance. Two of the three fall on a weekend in 2026, and this divergence is the most common source of confusion for employers running staff across the tricity.

Ram Navami on March 26 and Mahavir Jayanti on March 31 are public holidays in Chandigarh where several states treat them as optional. Combined with Holi on March 4 and Id-ul-Fitr on March 21, March carries four declared days and is the heaviest month of the year.

Diwali on Sunday November 8 is already a general holiday under the all-Sundays rule, and Govardhan Puja on November 9 is restricted rather than public. Chandigarh therefore loses no dedicated working day to the Diwali week in 2026, an accident of the calendar that will not repeat.

Restricted Holidays in Chandigarh

The restricted list runs to 24 days and the notification permits each employee to avail any 2. The quota, not the length of the list, is what governs staffing, and it should be set explicitly in leave policy.

Several observances that are gazetted elsewhere in North India sit on Chandigarh's restricted list: Vaisakhi on April 14, Maha Shivratri on February 15, Milad-un-Nabi on August 26, Muharram on June 26, and both Sikh martyrdom days. An establishment closing on any of these is doing so by choice.

Eight restricted days fall on Saturdays or Sundays in 2026 (Guru Ravi Das's Birthday, Maha Shivratri, Easter Sunday, Maharaja Agarsain Jayanti, Chhath Puja, and two of the three Jor Mela days), and Saturdays and Sundays are already general holidays under Schedule-I. That leaves roughly sixteen restricted days with any practical value, and employees will concentrate their two-day quota on Lohri, Karwa Chauth, and Raksha Bandhan.

HR & Payroll Guidance for Chandigarh, 2026

The tricity problem is the defining operational issue. Chandigarh, Mohali, and Panchkula sit within a few kilometres of each other under three different notifications, and teams routinely include staff mapped to all three. Deciding whether the holiday follows the workplace or the residence, documenting it, and applying it consistently prevents most of the disputes this generates.

Do not build the Chandigarh calendar from an aggregator. The commercial holiday sites publish Schedule-I and Schedule-II flattened into a single list of 40 days, which more than doubles the apparent number of automatic closures and promotes Vaisakhi, Maha Shivratri, Milad-un-Nabi, and both Sikh martyrdom days into public holidays they are not.

March is the heaviest month with four public holidays. The autumn block is unusually light in 2026 because Diwali falls on a Sunday and Govardhan Puja is restricted. That is a calendar accident rather than a structural feature, and a recurring plan should not assume it.

Watch for the Guru Gobind Singh Ji announcement from the Government of Punjab, which Chandigarh adopts by reference rather than fixing itself. It is the one holiday that will not appear in any list published at the start of the year.

Engage HRMS carries Chandigarh as a distinct location calendar separate from Punjab and Haryana, with its own 2-day restricted quota and the all-Saturdays rule applied, so tricity employers can map employees by work location without maintaining three parallel calendars by hand.