Guyana public holidays

What this value means

FIFTEEN holidays in a full year: eleven fixed or already gazetted for 2026, two Muslim/Hindu movable days still to be gazetted, and Christmas/Boxing Day, which are statutory but which Home Affairs nevertheless re-gazettes each December. TRAP 1 — 'EVERY SUNDAY' IS IN THE STATUTE. Section 3(1) opens 'every Sunday; the first week-day of January; Republic Day...'. Every Sunday is legally a public holiday in Guyana. No commercial calendar carries this and it is not served in the list above, but it matters for any 'is this a public holiday' or business-day computation built on the statute rather than on the list. TRAP 2 — THE CONSOLIDATED SCHEDULE IS BADLY OUT OF DATE. The L.R.O. 1/2012 consolidation of s. 3(1) still reads 'Commonwealth Day, that is to say the first Monday in August' and contains NO Independence Day, NO Arrival Day, NO CARICOM Day and NO Emancipation Day. Those four are appointed year by year by Ministerial notification under SECTION 6 — the 2026 notifications for Arrival Day, Independence Day, CARICOM Day and Emancipation Day all expressly cite s. 6, whereas Labour Day cites s. 3(1) and Phagwah and Eid-Ul-Adha cite ss. 3(1) and 3(2). Anyone reading only the consolidated Act will produce a wrong calendar. TRAP 3 — SUNDAY-ONLY ROLL-FORWARD, AND A SPECIAL CHRISTMAS RULE. Section 3(1) moves a holiday to the following day only where it falls on a SUNDAY. Saturday holidays are NOT rolled forward: in 2026 Emancipation Day (1 August) and Boxing Day (26 December) both fall on a Saturday and were/will be declared on the Saturday — the Emancipation Day notification of 13 July 2026 says exactly 'SATURDAY AUGUST 1, 2026 IS HEREBY DECLARED A PUBLIC HOLIDAY'. The 26 December rule has a wrinkle: it moves to the following day if 26 December is a Sunday, 'unless Christmas Day falls on a Sunday, and then the Tuesday following Christmas Day'. Neither is engaged in 2026 (25 December 2026 is a Friday, 26 December a Saturday), and no 2026 holiday falls on a Sunday. TRAP 4 — EID-UL-FITR IS NOT A PUBLIC HOLIDAY IN GUYANA. The launching brief listed Eid al-Fitr. Section 3(1) names only Eid-Ul-Azha (Eid-Ul-Adha) among the Muslim festivals, alongside Youman Nabi; there is no Eid-Ul-Fitr holiday and none was gazetted in 2026. This is the opposite of Trinidad and Tobago, where Eid-ul-Fitr is a holiday and Eid-ul-Adha is not. NOT YET GAZETTED (2 of 15): Youman Nabi (Mawlid) falls in late August 2026 on the almanacs and Deepavali in late October or November 2026 — DO NOT SERVE EITHER AS FACT. Section 3(2) requires the Minister to gazette them 'as soon as reasonably practicable before the dates so notified'; recent practice is roughly two to five weeks ahead (2024: Youman Nabi gazetted 7 September, Deepavali 12 October; 2023: Deepavali gazetted 14 October). Re-check the e-Gazette from about the first week of August 2026 for Youman Nabi and from early October 2026 for Deepavali. If either falls on a Sunday it rolls to the Monday under s. 3(1). REPUBLIC DAY — WEAKEST ENTRY IN THIS LIST. Section 3(1) defines Republic Day as 'such day in each year as shall, by notice published in the Gazette, be appointed for the purpose by the Minister', and it has been 23 February (Mashramani, marking the 1970 republic) in every year since. 23 February 2026 was a Monday. This agent could NOT locate the 2026 notification: the e-Gazette full-text index carries a Republic Day notification for 15 February 2025 but nothing equivalent for 2026, and the Legal Supplement B of every weekly Official Gazette checked for late January and February 2026 (24 and 31 January, 14, 21 and 28 February) carried other business. Treat 2026-02-23 as the settled conventional date, not as a date read off a 2026 instrument. CHRISTMAS, BOXING DAY AND NEW YEAR: statutory under s. 3(1) and not dependent on a notification, but Home Affairs does gazette them together each December (e.g. Extraordinary Gazette, 7 December 2024, covering Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's Day) — expect a December 2026 notification confirming 25 and 26 December 2026 and 1 January 2027. ACCESS NOTES: (1) the e-Gazette search endpoint https://egazette.officialgazette.gov.gy/api/search?query=<terms>&page=1&limit=50 returns JSON with /api/pdf/<uuid> download links and is the only reliable machine path — the public /search page is client-rendered and the pre-2026 /index.php/publications/... deep links all redirect to the home page; (2) 2026 holiday notifications are being published inside the WEEKLY Official Gazette's Legal Supplement B rather than as titled Extraordinary Gazettes, so a title search for 'Public Holidays Act' finds nothing after 2025 — you must full-text search and then open the issue; (3) those Legal Supplement B pages are SCANNED IMAGES with no text layer, so pdftotext returns an empty page and the notification must be rendered and read visually; (4) moha.gov.gy publishes the same notices but several 2026 posts are JPEG images with no HTML text, its category listing is paginated with percent-encoded mathematical-bold slugs, and its standing /public-holidays/ page was stale at confirmation (newest item Phagwah 2025); (5) statisticsguyana.gov.gy, dpi.gov.gy, mola.gov.gy and finance.gov.gy HTML pages return HTTP 403 to some automated clients but serve normally with a browser User-Agent. Entries with a null date carry a structured pending_window (YYYY-MM) so the settlement-date endpoint can REFUSE that window rather than silently treat an unappointed statutory holiday as a business day (added 2026-07-27).

Get it programmatically

curl https://latamref.dev/v1/gy/public-holidays
# Free.
# History:    curl https://latamref.dev/v1/gy/public-holidays/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://latamref.dev/provenance/gy/public-holidays

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