Japanese public holidays

Every public holiday in Japan, with English and Japanese names, substitute holidays included. Subscribe in Google Calendar, Outlook or Apple Calendar, or use the data as JSON, CSV or iCalendar, free and with no sign-up.

Public holidays in 2026#

18 days: 16 national holidays, 1 substitute holiday and 1 citizens’ holiday. Long weekends and Golden Week in 2026

Public holidays in 2027#

17 days: 16 national holidays and 1 substitute holiday. Long weekends and Golden Week in 2027

Add the holidays to your calendar#

Subscribe once and the calendar keeps itself up to date: new years appear when the Cabinet Office publishes them. Use the English calendar, or the Japanese one if you would rather see the names as they appear on a Japanese calendar.

English names

https://marubox.jp/holidays/jp.ics

Japanese names

https://marubox.jp/holidays/jp-ja.ics

1. Google Calendar: Other calendars → + → From URL, paste the address, then Add calendar.
2. Outlook: Add calendar → Subscribe from web, paste the address, then Import.
3. Apple Calendar: File → New Calendar Subscription, paste the address, then Subscribe.

The days are marked free rather than busy, so they will not block out time in anything that reads your calendar for availability.

Use the data#

Every public holiday since 1955, free, with no key and no sign-up. The files are static and served with Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *, so a browser can fetch them directly. Unlike the Cabinet Office CSV, they are UTF-8, have English names, and say what kind of holiday each day is.

Each holiday in the JSON looks like this:

{
  "date": "2026-01-01",
  "weekday": "Thu",
  "name": {
    "ja": "元日",
    "en": "New Year's Day"
  },
  "kind": "national"
}

Checking whether a date is a holiday, in JavaScript:

const res = await fetch('https://marubox.jp/holidays/jp/2026.json');
const { holidays } = await res.json();
const isHoliday = (date) => holidays.some((h) => h.date === date);
isHoliday('2026-01-01'); // true

kind is one of national, substitute, citizens or special, explained below. Dates are YYYY-MM-DD in Japan time, and weekday is the English three-letter day.

Four kinds of holiday#

National holiday (国民の祝日)

The sixteen days named in the Act on National Holidays, such as New Year’s Day and Culture Day.

Substitute holiday (振替休日)

When a national holiday falls on a Sunday, the next day that is not already a holiday is a day off instead. In place since 1973.

Citizens’ holiday (国民の休日)

An ordinary day that falls between two national holidays becomes a holiday too. This is why 22 September 2026 is a day off.

Special holiday

One-off days set by their own law, such as the 2019 enthronement and imperial weddings.

The Cabinet Office CSV calls both substitute and citizens’ holidays just 休日, so a list built straight from it cannot tell them apart. This one works it out from the surrounding days, and checks that every 休日 since 1955 is one or the other.

Where the list comes from#

From the Cabinet Office’s list of national holidays, the official source, which it updates every February once the equinox dates for the following year are announced. This page and the files were last updated on 2026-09-29. The Cabinet Office publishes the list under the Digital Agency’s Public Data License (version 1.0), which is compatible with CC BY 4.0, and this edited version is offered on the same terms: use it for anything, including commercially, and credit “Source: Cabinet Office, Government of Japan (内閣府「国民の祝日」). Edited by Business Box (marubox.jp), which added English names and holiday kinds”.

Closing for holidays without thinking about it#

If you take appointments, the dates above are the ones customers try to book and you forget to block. Business Box uses this same list: turn on Close on Japanese public holidays and your booking page stops offering times on every one of them, substitute holidays included. It is free to use. How holiday closing works

Last reviewed 28 September 2026.