Botswana public holidays

What this value means

The Schedule names 14 days: New Year's Day; 2nd January; Good Friday; the Saturday following Good Friday; Easter Monday; Ascension Day; Labour Day (1st May); Sir Seretse Khama Day (1st July); President's Day (third Monday in July); the Tuesday following President's Day; Botswana Day (30th September); 1st October; Christmas Day; Boxing Day. MOVABLE DAYS use WESTERN (Gregorian) Easter: Easter Sunday 2026 is 5 April, so Good Friday is 3 April, Holy Saturday 4 April, Easter Monday 6 April and Ascension Day (39 days after Easter Sunday) is Thursday 14 May 2026. President's Day is the third Monday in July = 20 July 2026, with 21 July as the day following. SUBSTITUTION RULES (s 2(1) provisos) — Botswana does NOT have a general Monday-substitution rule; it has three specific ones: (i) when any scheduled day falls on a SUNDAY the following Monday is observed; (ii) when 2nd January, 1st October or Boxing Day falls on a MONDAY the following Tuesday is observed; (iii) when Botswana Day falls on a SATURDAY the following Monday is observed. In 2026 NONE of the three is triggered — no scheduled day falls on a Sunday, 2 Jan is a Friday, 1 Oct a Thursday, Boxing Day a Saturday and Botswana Day a Wednesday — so all 14 days are observed on their natural dates and there are no substitute holidays. Boxing Day (Sat 26 Dec) and Holy Saturday (Sat 4 Apr) fall on Saturdays with no compensating day. MINING CARVE-OUT (s 2(2)): in the mining industry ONLY Christmas Day, Good Friday and Botswana Day are public holidays — the other eleven do not apply to undertakings engaged in the winning of minerals as defined in the Mines and Minerals Act. AD HOC DAYS: under s 3 the President may declare additional one-off public holidays by notice in the Gazette (e.g. 23-25 October 2019 around the general election; 16 June 2025 'Day of the African Child' appears on the Government portal as a 2025 holiday on this basis). Such days apply only in the year declared and cannot be forecast. SOURCE TRAP: the Government's own portal list (www.gov.bw/holidays-and-breaks, paginated) OMITS 2 January 2026 while listing the other thirteen days; the statutory Schedule includes it, so the statute is followed here. Botswana does not publish its Gazette online; the consolidated Act text used is the 'Copyright Government of Botswana' edition mirrored in ILO NATLEX. 2027 EXTENSION (2026-07-30): the Schedule to the Public Holidays Act, 2006 (Act 17 of 2006, Cap 03:07). President's Day is expressly 'the third Monday in July' in the Schedule, giving Monday 19 July 2027 with the following Tuesday also a holiday. Substitution under s.2(1) has THREE provisos and only the first fires in 2027: a holiday on a SUNDAY is observed the following Monday, so Boxing Day gives Monday 27 December. The second proviso (2 January, 1 October or Boxing Day on a Monday adds the Tuesday) and the third (Botswana Day on a Saturday) are not triggered - Botswana Day falls Thursday 30 September 2027. There is no general Saturday rule, so 2 January, Labour Day and Christmas Day, all Saturdays in 2027, are lost. Note s.2(2) restricts which holidays apply in mining operations. Ad-hoc presidential days under s.3 are not forecastable and none is proclaimed for 2027.

Get it programmatically

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

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