Japan National Holidays and Golden Week Dates 2024/2025

Japan is famed as a country of workaholics. But it actually has a lot of national holidays compared to most other countries around the world: 16, spread out across the year.

Several of these are clustered together to make Golden Week from late April to early May. Golden Week usually isn’t a full week’s worth of holidays, but many people take days off to fill in the gaps. Also, sometimes the holidays themselves are shifted to maximize the number of consecutive days off. 

Be sure to book any tickets or reservations well in advance if you’re traveling during Golden Week, as it’s one of the most popular (and expensive) times for travel. Many Japanese people travel around this time, so expect tourist destinations around the country to be crowded.

Outside Golden Week, Japanese national holidays are sometimes celebrated on a different day to when they officially fall, especially if they’re due to occur over a weekend. Usually, the following Monday will be made a “compensatory holiday” to accommodate this.

Another law stipulates that a weekday that is sandwiched between two holidays will also become a public holiday, which sometimes results in the elusive Silver Week in late September. Don’t get your hopes up, though — the next Silver Week isn’t until 2026!

The whole New Year period from December 31 to January 3 is often treated as a public holiday, even though January 1 is the only official holiday.

It’s the same over Obon, a three-day period that occurs in August or September. During this time, people traditionally return to their hometowns to pay respects to deceased relatives and honor their ancestors. These days it’s usually treated like a short summer holiday by a lot of people, though.

Obon used to be based on the lunar calendar, which meant that the dates changed every year. Nowadays, though, most regions of Japan have adopted fixed dates. They didn’t all pick the same one, and some areas (especially Okinawa) still refer to the lunar calendar’s dates. Sometimes it’ll even vary between companies in the same city, so be careful! 

Many companies will be closed during Obon and New Year, so we’ve included these unofficial holidays in this list, too.

The dates of national holidays, New Year, and Obon for 2024 are as follows. Dates in bold aren’t official public holidays, but will likely see lots of closures. Several holidays in 2024 fall on Sunday and are therefore observed the following Monday instead.

Golden Week 2024 runs from Saturday, April 27 to Monday, May 6 (Children’s Day observed). There’s a three-day consecutive holiday from April 27–29, then after three days, a four-day consecutive holiday from May 3 to 6.