The Country Stops for Four Days and Nobody Tells You
There are public holidays that close government offices but leave shops open, and public holidays that close everything, and guessing wrong costs you a day you cannot get back.
You arrive on the morning you need to renew something at an immigration office and the door is locked. There is no sign, no explanation and no staff. The building is simply shut, because today is a public holiday that nobody outside Thailand had put in your calendar.
This is the single most common avoidable waste of a day in this country.
Last verified 5 September 2026.
Two kinds of holiday, and the difference matters
Government holidays close the state. Immigration offices, the Revenue Department, consular services, most government departments, some hospitals' administrative functions. Banks stay open, shops stay open, transport runs.
Public holidays close the country. Shops, restaurants, markets, banks, offices. This is what people usually mean by a public holiday and it is much more disruptive.
Shophouse and mall businesses have been legally closed on public holidays since 2003, and this applies to the big shopping centres as well as small shops. If you are expecting to buy something, this is the rule to plan around.
The fixed-date ones
1 January, New Year's Day. Shops close, everything is quiet, some transport is reduced.
1 May, Labour Day, and it is a genuine national holiday rather than a token one. Shops close.
4 July, Coronation Day, marking the 2019 coronation of King Rama X.
6 July, Asarnah Bucha, a Buddhist holiday on the lunar calendar.
28 September, the King's birthday. This is a public holiday and a great deal closes.
13 April, Songkran, the Thai new year, is the big one. Government offices close and many businesses either close or operate on a holiday schedule, and the country is in a state of organised chaos for three days.
The floating ones
Everything tied to the Buddhist and Hindu lunar calendar moves about eleven days earlier each Gregorian year. That includes:
Makha Bucha, usually in February.
Visakha Bucha, usually in May, and a major holiday that closes a great deal.
Asarnah Bucha, usually in July.
The Islamic holidays, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, follow the lunar calendar too and their dates shift each year. They matter in the deep south, particularly in Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat, where the closures and the atmosphere are different from the rest of the country.
Loy Krathong, the festival rather than an official holiday, falls on the full moon of the 12th lunar month and is usually in November. It is not a closure day but it changes travel enormously.
Songkran's dates are fixed at 13 to 15 April regardless of the lunar calendar, which is why it does not drift.
What has changed
The royal-related public holiday list was substantially reduced after 2016 and again under the current administration. Several former holidays, including some tied to previous kings' birthdays and a Constitution Day, are no longer on the list.
This means older articles, including a great many currently ranking, list holidays that no longer exist. If a page tells you the 6th of December is a national holiday, it is out of date, and that is the single most common error in the Thai holiday guides you will find online.
How to plan around it
Check the dates once, at the start of a long stay, against the official Thai government holiday list rather than a blog, and mark every one on your own calendar with a note that says "immigration closed" or "everything closed".
Never book a visa appointment, a border run, or anything at an immigration office within three days of a holiday you have not verified. The queues and the rescheduling absorb the days on either side.
Plan extra days into any trip that crosses Songkran, which is the one holiday that reliably disrupts transport, accommodation and staffing across the whole country for three days.
And remember that a public holiday is not a lost day if you planned it. A country where the shops are shut is a country where the temples are packed and the trains are full and nobody is working, and that is not a bad thing to spend a day doing. It is only a lost day if you had somewhere to be.
