China Weekend Days, Make-Up Workdays and Public Holidays

China's regular weekend is Saturday and Sunday, but the State Council turns some Saturdays and Sundays into ordinary working days around the main public holidays so the holiday can run as one long break. In return, weekdays inside the holiday block become days off.

China's public holiday calendar is governed nationally. The State Council publishes the holiday schedule for each year in advance, and employers must observe it. The calendar has its own internal logic that takes some getting used to — particularly the compensatory working weekends that appear around the major holidays.

What are the weekend days in China?

China's regular weekend is Saturday and Sunday. The national holiday measures are written around that weekend: if a public holiday falls on a Saturday or Sunday, a day off is given on a working day instead. The same measures say that holidays can be combined with swapped rest days to make a longer break, and that apart from special cases people should generally not work more than six days in a row on either side of a statutory holiday. (Source: Measures on National Annual Holidays and Memorial Days, Articles 6 and 7, as amended by State Council Decree No. 795, in force from 1 January 2025.)

Which weekend days are working days in 2026?

The State Council General Office notice on the 2026 holiday arrangements, dated 4 November 2025, sets six Saturdays and Sundays as ordinary working days:

• New Year's Day: holiday Thursday 1 to Saturday 3 January; Sunday 4 January is a working day.
• Spring Festival: holiday Sunday 15 to Monday 23 February (9 days); Saturday 14 February and Saturday 28 February are working days.
• Qingming Festival: holiday Saturday 4 to Monday 6 April; no working weekend.
• Labour Day: holiday Friday 1 to Tuesday 5 May; Saturday 9 May is a working day.
• Dragon Boat Festival: holiday Friday 19 to Sunday 21 June; no working weekend.
• Mid-Autumn Festival: holiday Friday 25 to Sunday 27 September; no working weekend.
• National Day: holiday Thursday 1 to Wednesday 7 October; Sunday 20 September and Saturday 10 October are working days.

(Source: 国务院办公厅关于2026年部分节假日安排的通知, 国办发明电〔2025〕7号, gov.cn.)

How many public holiday days does China have?

China has 13 public holiday days across 7 occasions (since 1 January 2025):

• New Year's Day (元旦): 1 January — 1 day
• Spring Festival (春节, Chinese New Year): 4 days — Lunar New Year's Eve and the first three days of the lunar new year
• Qingming Festival (清明节): 1 day — the traditional tomb-sweeping festival, falls around 4–6 April
• Labour Day (劳动节): 2 days — 1–2 May
• Dragon Boat Festival (端午节): 1 day — the 5th day of the 5th lunar month, falls in June
• Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节): 1 day — the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, falls in September
• National Day (国庆节): 3 days — 1–3 October, marking the founding of the People's Republic in 1949

The total is 13 days. For comparison, the US Office of Personnel Management lists 11 federal holidays. The Chinese public holidays are supplemented by statutory annual leave.

The Golden Week System: Adding Days by Moving Weekends

The two most significant holidays — Spring Festival and National Day — are extended into holiday blocks of seven days or more (the 2026 Spring Festival break runs nine days, 15–23 February). This is achieved not by adding extra public holidays but by reclassifying adjacent weekends.

The mechanism: the State Council designates Saturdays or Sundays before and/or after the statutory public holiday as compensatory working days (the 2026 list above includes 20 September for National Day, and 14 and 28 February for Spring Festival). This allows the Saturday and Sunday within the holiday period to be used as holiday, creating a block of seven or more consecutive days. In exchange, workers put in weekend shifts on the dates designated as makeups.

The practical result: in the weeks surrounding Spring Festival and National Day, workers can expect to work one or both of the adjacent weekends. The specific dates are set in a State Council General Office notice, usually published in the autumn or late in the preceding year (the 2026 notice was issued on 4 November 2025), and HR departments circulate the adjusted calendar.

For expatriates not fully tracking the Chinese calendar: these compensatory working Saturdays appear without much warning if you are not watching for them. Check the State Council notice as soon as it is published.

Labour Day and Other Minor Holidays

Labour Day is a 2-day statutory holiday (1–2 May), but the State Council notice for 2026 turns it into a five-day break, 1–5 May, by making Saturday 9 May a working day, using the same adjacent-weekend-swap mechanism. The result is that May now has a mini-Golden Week of its own, smaller than October or Spring Festival but still busy for domestic travel.

Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival are single days. When they fall mid-week they are observed as single-day breaks; sometimes an adjacent weekend is swapped to create a 3-day weekend, but this varies by year.

Statutory Annual Leave

Separate from public holidays, Chinese labour rules give employees statutory paid annual leave once they have worked continuously for 12 months or more. The number of days depends on cumulative working time, which counts time with the same or different employers:

• 1 to under 10 years of cumulative work: 5 days per year
• 10 to under 20 years: 10 days per year
• 20 years or more: 15 days per year

National statutory holidays and rest days are not counted as annual leave. The implementing measures apply to employees who have an employment relationship with an enterprise, a private non-enterprise unit or an individual business with employees. If the employment contract or the employer's rules give more days or higher pay than the statutory standard, the employer must follow the higher standard.

Employers arrange annual leave according to production and work needs, taking the employee's wishes into account. If the employer cannot arrange leave because of work needs, or carries it over into a following year, the implementing measures require the employee's consent.

Unused leave: where the employer, with the employee's consent, does not arrange leave for work reasons, it must pay 300% of the daily wage for each unused day in total, and that 300% includes the normal wage already paid for that time. Where the employer does arrange leave but the employee declines in writing for personal reasons, the employer may pay only the normal wage for that period.

(Source: Regulations on Paid Annual Leave of Employees, State Council Decree No. 514, Articles 2, 3 and 5; Measures for the Implementation of Paid Annual Leave for Enterprise Employees, MOHRSS Order No. 1, Articles 2, 3, 4, 9, 10 and 13; both on gov.cn.)

How Expatriates Typically Manage the Holiday Calendar

Spring Festival travel: if you need to travel during Spring Festival — either internationally or domestically — plan well in advance. Train tickets open on 12306 fifteen days before departure, and popular routes sell out within hours on the day they open. For flights, fares surge in the two weeks either side of the festival. The week immediately after the festival (when migrant workers return to cities) is the worst period for train availability, often worse than the outbound peak.

National Day: many long-term expatriates treat National Day Golden Week as the preferred window for international travel, avoiding the peak domestic congestion while taking advantage of the 7-day block. Flights from major Chinese cities to nearby international destinations (Bangkok, Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore) are heavily booked; book 4–6 weeks ahead.

The working weekend calendar: once you have the full-year State Council schedule, put the compensatory working Saturdays and Sundays in your diary: they are ordinary working days.

The Lunar Calendar Complication

The dates of Spring Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, and Mid-Autumn Festival change each year relative to the Western calendar because they are set by the lunar calendar. Spring Festival falls somewhere between 21 January and 20 February. Planning annual leave more than a year ahead requires checking the published dates for the specific year in question. Our China festival calendar 2026 lists the dates of the main public holidays and regional festivals for 2026 and 2027.