Albania public holidays 2027: fixed, calculated and still-expected dates, month by month

There are fifteen, from New Year to Christmas, and nine of them land on a Saturday or Sunday. The list comes from the Bank of Albania's official calendar, and the Albanian holidays law, no. 7651 of 21 December 1992 as later amended, is what lies behind the fixed ones.

The last column gives the basis for each date. The third shows the working day the bank closes instead when a holiday falls on a weekend.

Eleven dates are firm because they repeat on the same day every year; the law names them. The newest additions are 5 September, written in by Law no. 1/2018, and Alphabet Day, added by a later amendment.

The two Easters are calculated, and that makes them just as firm. Catholic Easter is the first Sunday after the church's full moon on or after 21 March, on the Gregorian calendar; Orthodox Easter applies the same rule on the Julian calendar. We ran both calculations for 2027 and they match the bank's dates.

Only the two Bajrams can move, because they follow the lunar calendar.

Expect Bajrami i Madh on 9 March and Kurban Bajram on 16 May, but treat both as provisional. These are the dates in the Bank of Albania's calendar, and its own footnote warns that they may change with the lunar calendar and that a second notice would follow.

When we checked on 5 November 2026, we found no Council of Ministers decision and no Official Gazette notice for 2027. We will review this page in February 2027, before the first of the two dates.

The day off moves to the next working day. Albania's consulate in London puts it plainly: a holiday on a Saturday or Sunday is observed on the following working day, and in 2027 the bank applies that nine times.

Two stretches stand out. Workers' Day and Orthodox Easter share the weekend of 1 May and 2 May, so the days off land on Monday 3 May and Tuesday 4 May. In November, Independence Day falls on Sunday 28 November and Liberation Day on Monday 29 November, which pushes the extra day to Tuesday 30 November.

Three more dates are worth a place in the calendar, and only one of them comes with a published 2027 announcement. Elbasan keeps Summer Day as its own festival: the National Tourism Agency says it is celebrated every 14 March, and in 2025 the city's programme ran for a week around it.

On the Riviera, Kala Festival has announced its 2027 dates in Dhërmi. The other date is a pattern, not an announcement: the Bektashi pilgrimage on Mount Tomorr, which the tourism agency places between 20 and 25 August every year.

The agency also lists festivals such as the Himara International Music Festival, but without 2027 dates, so we leave them out. The same goes for the Gjirokastër National Folk Festival, last listed for 2023. Club nights are absent too: none for 2027 was on sale when we last read the listings on 31 October 2026, and they appear in the calendar once published.

The one closure we can confirm is official offices. The bank's calendar speaks only for the bank; other public bodies, like the consulate and the industrial property office, have published the same pattern, but we found no official rule for shops, beach bars or clubs.

If you land around a long weekend, sort out cash before it: our guide to lek and euro covers the money side. For early May, when Easter and Workers' Day fall together, the weather by month shows what the coast is like that early in the year.