Jammu & Kashmir Public Holidays 2026

Understanding Jammu & Kashmir's Holiday Calendar in 2026

The J&K General Administration Department issued Government Order No. 1894-JK(GAD) of 2025 dated 12 December 2025 for government offices and educational institutions, and Government Order No. 1895-JK(GAD) of 2025 of the same date for holidays under the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881. Together they declare 47 holiday entries for offices against 25 for banks: 28 in Annexure-A, and in Annexure-B four Kashmir provincial, three Jammu provincial, eight local and four restricted.

The geographic scoping is the thing that separates J&K from every other state list. Annexure-A applies throughout the Union territory. Annexure-B does not: its entries are declared for one province, one district, or in two cases a pair of tehsils. Holi is a Jammu province holiday and is not observed in the valley. Good Friday, Mahavir Jayanti and the Mela at Bahu Fort are declared for Jammu district alone. The Sarthal Devi Ji Yatra is Kishtwar district only, and the Kailash Yatra and Mela Pat are confined to Tehsil Bhaderwah and Tehsil Bhalla.

Four of the Annexure-B entries run over two days: Sarthal Devi Ji Yatra on 21 and 22 July, Kailash Yatra on 9 and 10 September, Mela Pat on 18 and 19 September, alongside Eid-ul-Azha on 27 and 28 May in Annexure-A. Treating any of these as a single day understates the closure.

For payroll, establishments fall under the Jammu and Kashmir Shops and Establishments Act, 1966. Following reorganisation in 2019, J&K is a Union Territory with a legislature and Ladakh is a separate Union Territory issuing its own holiday notification.

National Holidays in Jammu & Kashmir

Republic Day on Monday, January 26, Independence Day on Saturday, August 15, and Gandhi Jayanti on Friday, October 2 appear in Annexure-A and in the NI Act list. Independence Day lands on a Saturday, one of ten declared dates that fall on a weekend in 2026, so it costs a five-day-week office nothing. Security arrangements around both national days are substantial in J&K and movement restrictions are common.

The Birthday of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar on Tuesday, April 14 is listed as its own entry at serial 12 of Annexure-A, immediately after Baisakhi at serial 11 on the same date. Both appear separately in the NI Act list as well. Baisakhi is the more prominent of the two in the Jammu division.

Jammu & Kashmir-Specific Holidays

The Urs observances are the distinguishing feature of the J&K calendar, and all four sit in Annexure-B rather than the territory-wide list. The Urs of Shah-i-Hamdan Sahib on Saturday May 23 and the Urs of Sheikh Noor-ud-Din Sahib at Charar-i-Sharief on Thursday October 8 are Kashmir province holidays. The Urs of Shah Farid-ud-Din Sahib on Sunday June 21 is declared for Kishtwar district alone, and the Urs of Shah Asrar-ud-Din Sahib on Tuesday November 10 for Kishtwar, Doda and Ramban districts. All are subject to appearance of the moon.

Mela Khir Bhawani on Monday, June 22 is a Kashmir province holiday. It is the principal Kashmiri Pandit pilgrimage, held at the Tulmulla shrine in Ganderbal, and draws displaced Pandit families back to the valley annually. Security arrangements are heavy.

Mahashivratri, known in Kashmir as Herath, is in Annexure-A and applies throughout the territory. It falls on Sunday February 15 in 2026, so it costs no working day. It is the most important Kashmiri Pandit festival and is observed over several days with household rituals unlike Shivratri elsewhere in India.

Nauroz coincides with Eid-ul-Fitr on Saturday March 21 in 2026 and both are listed separately in Annexure-A. Nauroz is not in the NI Act list, so banks do not close for it independently. It appears on no other Indian state calendar.

Accession Day on Monday, October 26 marks the signing of the Instrument of Accession in 1947. The Birthday of Maharaja Hari Singh Ji on Wednesday, September 23 is a more recent addition. Both are territory-wide and both are NI Act holidays.

The Islamic dates are more numerous here than elsewhere. Shab-i-Miraj on January 17, Shab-i-Qadr on March 17, Jumat-ul-Vida on March 20, Ashoora on June 26 and Eid-i-Milad-ul-Nabi on August 26 are all in Annexure-A, and the Fridays following Shab-i-Miraj and Eid-i-Milad are separately declared, the first as a Kashmir province holiday on January 23 and the second territory-wide on August 28.

Five Annexure-A holidays are deliberately absent from the NI Act list, so government offices close while banks work: Guru Gobind Singh Ji's Birthday on January 5, Shab-i-Miraj on January 17, Nauroz on March 21, Ramanavami on March 26 and Mahanavami on October 20. The NI Act list moves in the other direction on two counts, adding Holi for the Jammu province on March 4 and the yearly closing of banks on Wednesday, April 1.

Restricted Holidays in Jammu & Kashmir

J&K publishes only four restricted holidays for 2026, the shortest optional list of any Indian jurisdiction: Parshuram Jayanti on April 19, the Martyr's Day of Guru Arjun Dev Ji on June 16, Kabir Jayanti on June 29, and Raksha Bandhan on August 28.

Two of the four are scoped to the Jammu province, Parshuram Jayanti and Kabir Jayanti, so a valley-based employee has fewer optional days available than a Jammu-based one.

The list is thinner in practice than four suggests. Parshuram Jayanti falls on a Sunday, and Raksha Bandhan lands on August 28, which is already a declared holiday territory-wide as the Friday following Eid-i-Milad. That leaves the Martyr's Day of Guru Arjun Dev Ji on Tuesday June 16 as the only optional day everywhere in the territory that actually costs an optional day to take.

The reason the optional list is so short is that J&K handles regional variation through geographic scoping in Annexure-B instead. Where Madhya Pradesh publishes sixty-three optional days and lets employees pick three, J&K declares full holidays for the province, district or pair of tehsils that observes them.

HR & Payroll Guidance for Jammu & Kashmir, 2026

Geographic scoping, not optional-day allocation, is what an HR system has to model here. A Srinagar office, a Jammu office, a Kishtwar office and a Bhaderwah office each observe a different set of Annexure-B days on top of the common Annexure-A list. A single territory-wide calendar will overstate closure in Srinagar for Holi and Good Friday, and understate it in Bhaderwah for the four Kailash Yatra and Mela Pat days.

The bank and office calendars diverge on seven dates. Payroll runs, statutory remittances and cheque clearing follow the NI Act list under Order 1895; office attendance follows Order 1894. April 1 is the sharpest case: banks close for yearly closing while government offices work.

Connectivity and weather are a practical overlay that no calendar captures. The Srinagar-Jammu highway closes periodically in winter and air connectivity is weather-dependent. Employees travelling between divisions around holidays can be stranded, so leave planning should build in more slack than a calendar-only view suggests.

Ramadan affects working patterns across the valley for a month, well beyond the declared Eid-ul-Fitr date on March 21. Shab-i-Qadr on March 17 and Jumat-ul-Vida on March 20 fall in the final days, and hours are commonly adjusted through the month. Plan March delivery commitments in the valley accordingly.

Engage HRMS supports location-bound calendars within a single jurisdiction, so district and tehsil-scoped entries from Annexure-B can be attached to the offices they actually apply to rather than issued territory-wide.