India’s holiday system runs on lists — and the most important one is the gazetted list. Understanding how the India gazetted holidays list is published each year explains why some holidays are mandatory days off, others are optional, and why your colleague in another state seems to have a different calendar. Here is how the machinery works, from New Delhi’s annual notification to your office notice board.
The DoPT Notification: Where It All Starts
Each year, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) — part of the Ministry of Personnel — issues an Office Memorandum listing the holidays to be observed by Central Government offices across India in the coming year. This is the gazetted list: the holidays that are officially notified in the Gazette of India and are therefore mandatory days off for central government offices. The 2026 list, for example, was issued well in advance, giving ministries, public-sector banks and central institutions time to plan. The list typically runs to around fourteen to seventeen days, covering the major national, religious and cultural observances.
Gazetted vs Restricted Holidays
The DoPT system has two tiers, and the distinction matters. Gazetted (compulsory) holidays are the mandatory days off — Republic Day on 26 January, Independence Day on 15 August, Gandhi Jayanti on 2 October, Diwali, Christmas and the other big dates. Restricted holidays are a second, longer list — usually around thirty-plus observances — from which each employee may choose a couple to observe according to their own faith and tradition. This elegant design lets a diverse workforce honour its own festivals: a Muslim employee might take Id-ul-Fitr as a restricted holiday in a year it is not gazetted, while a colleague chooses something else. The restricted list is published alongside the gazetted one.
States Publish Their Own Lists
Here is where it gets local: each state government publishes its own holiday list for state offices, schools and institutions, and these can differ substantially from the central list. A festival that is a full public holiday in one state may be a working day in another — Holi, Pongal, Bihu, Onam and Chhath are classic examples of regionally concentrated holidays. States also add their foundation days and locally significant observances. So the “India holiday calendar” is really dozens of calendars: start with the central gazetted list, then layer on your state’s notification for the complete picture.
What This Means for Planning
If you work for the central government or a public-sector bank, the DoPT list is your bible — it is final when published and rarely changes. If you work in the private sector, your employer typically adopts a subset: most companies observe eight to twelve of the major holidays and let the rest pass as working days. Schools follow state education department calendars, which blend state holidays with exam schedules. For 2026, the reliable move is to download the DoPT Office Memorandum for the central list and your state government’s notification for the local layer — and to treat any holiday list on social media that lacks a notification number with healthy scepticism.