Namibia public holidays

What this value means

Twelve public holidays. Nine are fixed by the Schedule (New Year's Day; Independence Day, 21 March; Workers Day, 1 May; Cassinga Day, 4 May; Africa Day, 25 May; Heroes Day, 26 August; Day of the Namibian Women and International Human Rights Day, 10 December; Christmas Day, 25 December; Family Day, 26 December). Three are movable Western-calendar Christian days: Good Friday, Easter Monday and Ascension Day. In 2026 Easter Sunday is 5 April, so Good Friday is 3 April, Easter Monday 6 April, and Ascension Day (39 days after Easter Sunday) is Thursday 14 May 2026. NAME CORRECTION: the 10 December holiday is often listed as 'Human Rights Day' or 'International Human Rights Day' (including on Namibian mission websites); its STATUTORY name since Act 16 of 2004 is 'Day of the Namibian Women and International Human Rights Day'. SUBSTITUTION RULE (section 1(2)): 'When a public holiday falls on a Sunday the following Monday shall also be a public holiday, unless that Monday is a public holiday.' Note it is SUNDAY-ONLY — there is no Saturday substitution. In 2026 NO listed holiday falls on a Sunday, so no Monday is added; two holidays fall on a Saturday and are simply lost — Independence Day (21 Mar 2026) and Family Day (26 Dec 2026). Cassinga Day and Africa Day both fall on a Monday naturally in 2026. AD-HOC HOLIDAYS: section 1(3) lets the President declare any other day in a particular year a public holiday by proclamation in the Gazette (used, for example, for election days and state funerals); none has been found for the remainder of 2026, but this series can change without notice — the trigger is a Presidential proclamation, not an amendment of the Act. ACCESS: the Namibian government's own holiday pages (mict.gov.na/public-holidays and lrdc.gov.na) were unreachable at confirmation (connection refused / DNS failure), and namiblii.org returns HTTP 403; the list above is taken from the statutory Schedule itself and corroborated against the Namibian diplomatic missions' published lists (e.g. https://www.embassyofnamibia.se/index.php/public-holidays). 2027 EXTENSION (2026-07-30): the Schedule to the Public Holidays Act 26 of 1990 as amended by Act 16 of 2004, plus Genocide Remembrance Day. NOTE THE SUBSTITUTION SEMANTICS: s.1(2) says that when a public holiday falls on a Sunday the following Monday 'shall ALSO be a public holiday' - it is ADDITIVE, so both days are holidays in law, unlike the 'shall be observed as' formulation used in Botswana and Eswatini. It fires twice in 2027: Independence Day falls on Sunday 21 March, adding Monday 22 March, and Family Day on Sunday 26 December, adding Monday 27 December. There is no Saturday rule, so Workers Day and Christmas Day are not compensated. Genocide Remembrance Day (28 May) rests on Proclamation No. 19 of 2024, Government Gazette 8373, which declared it a public holiday with effect from 28 May 2025; note the legal tension that s.1(3) authorises declaring a day 'in a particular year' while the proclamation is open-ended and the Schedule was never amended, so it is served on a proclamation basis rather than as a Schedule day.

Get it programmatically

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

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