Jamaica public holidays

What this value means

TEN statutory public holidays: New Year's Day, Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Labour Day (23 May), Emancipation Day (1 August), Independence Day (6 August), National Heroes' Day (third Monday in October), Christmas Day, Boxing Day. NOT public holidays despite frequent listing by aggregators: Bob Marley Day (6 February) and Easter Sunday (5 April 2026) are national/religious observances only, and New Year's Eve is not a holiday at all — several commercial calendars wrongly include all three. MOVEABLE DATES IN 2026: Easter Sunday is 5 April 2026, so Ash Wednesday is 18 February, Good Friday 3 April and Easter Monday 6 April. National Heroes' Day is the THIRD Monday of October (19 October 2026) — the Jamaican Consulate General Toronto page states 'second Monday', which is wrong; the Government's own observance notices and the statutory practice use the third Monday. WEEKEND TREATMENT IS NOT AUTOMATIC and must be read from the Minister's notice each year: for 2026 Labour Day (Sat 23 May) WAS moved to Monday 25 May, while Emancipation Day (Sat 1 August) was expressly NOT moved and is observed on the Saturday. Boxing Day falls on Saturday 26 December 2026; as at 23 July 2026 no Section 2 notice had been issued for it, so it is carried on its natural date — re-check late 2026 for a notice moving observance to Monday 28 December. ACCESS PROBLEM: the Holidays (Public General) Act PDF at laws.moj.gov.jm is an image-only scan and unreadable by machine; there is no single machine-readable Government of Jamaica page listing the year's holidays, so the list is assembled from the Act's known schedule plus the JIS-published ministerial observance notices. Monitor https://jis.gov.jm/calendar/category/public-holidays/ for new notices. 2027 EXTENSION (2026-07-30): the Holidays (Public General) Act, Cap. 148 Schedule, whose substitution rules are written PER HOLIDAY rather than globally. National Labour Day is the one that moves from either Saturday or Sunday, so 23 May 2027 (a Sunday) is observed Monday 24 May; Emancipation Day moves from Sunday only, giving Monday 2 August; Independence Day's Sunday limb is not triggered; National Heroes' Day is the third Monday in October. LIMITATION ON BOXING DAY: the Schedule creates a substitute only when CHRISTMAS falls on a Sunday, and in 2027 Christmas falls on a SATURDAY, so the Act yields Boxing Day on Sunday 26 December with no Monday substitute and no Saturday substitute for Christmas itself. The identical calendar arose in 2021, when the Ministry of Labour and Social Security issued guidance directing observance on the Monday notwithstanding the Act, and no amendment has been passed since. We therefore serve the statutory dates and flag that a Monday 27 December observance in 2027 would depend on fresh ministerial guidance that has not been issued. Note also that Good Friday and Christmas Day do not appear in the Act's Schedule at all - they are holidays by other operation of law.

Get it programmatically

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

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