In 2026, Koreans Get at Least 118 Days Off – A Calendar Packed with Hidden ‘Golden Holidays’

Published: Mon., Dec. 1, 2025, 6:05:31 p.m.

118 Days Off: The 2026 Calendar by the Numbers

In 2026, Koreans will theoretically be able to take 118 days off when weekends, statutory public holidays and substitute holidays are counted together. In other words, almost one-third of the 365-day year appears on the calendar as a day of rest. That figure is more than two days higher than in 2025, and when paid annual leave is layered on top, workers can carve out multiple stretches of four days or more.

Most full-time employees are entitled to roughly 15 days of paid leave a year. How they distribute those days – whether they tack them onto national holidays or scatter them across the year – dramatically changes how “restful” the year actually feels. The 2026 calendar is structurally friendly to those who are able to cluster days off. Seollal (Lunar New Year), Chuseok, Liberation Day, National Foundation Day and Hangeul Day line up neatly with weekends or substitute holidays, widening the gap in lived experience between those who can plan freely and those whose schedules are fixed by their employer or industry.

Seollal and Chuseok: Two Anchor Points for Long Breaks

The most striking feature of the 2026 calendar is that both Seollal and Chuseok naturally form the backbone of potential long holidays.

The official Seollal holiday runs from 16 to 18 February. With the preceding weekend attached, that already creates a five-day break from 14 to 18 February. If an employee adds paid leave on 19 and 20 February, the break stretches to 14–22 February – a nine-day holiday that rivals Europe’s summer vacations in length.

Chuseok follows a similar pattern later in the year. The official three-day holiday runs from 24 to 26 September and rolls straight into Sunday the 27th, giving four days off by default. But with some planning – for example, using paid leave on 21–23 September – workers can clear their schedule for nine consecutive days, from 19 to 27 September, by combining weekend, annual leave and the Chuseok break.

Longer holiday blocks like these drive up demand for both traditional homecoming trips and overseas travel. That in turn exacerbates chronic issues Koreans know all too well: gridlocked expressways, tight supplies of high-speed rail seats, congested airports and peak-season fares. In that sense, the Seollal and Chuseok of 2026 may look very familiar – only busier.

How Substitute Holidays Redraw the Map of Rest

If Seollal and Chuseok provide the backbone, Korea’s substitute holiday system fills in the flesh of the 2026 calendar. A few dates stand out.

March 1st, Independence Movement Day, falls on a Sunday. Under current rules, the following Monday, 2 March, becomes a substitute holiday. That creates a three-day weekend from 28 February to 2 March without any annual leave required – the first natural short-break opportunity after Seollal.

Liberation Day, 15 August, lands on a Saturday, but 17 August (Monday) is designated as a substitute day off. That effectively inserts a three-day holiday into the latter half of the summer travel season, a period when demand for both domestic and short-haul overseas travel is already high.

National Foundation Day (3 October) and Hangeul Day (9 October) are similarly aligned with weekends, resulting in two separate three-day weekends in October. As a result, the month becomes a patchwork of compressed work weeks and extended breaks.

For many office workers, this system functions as a pressure valve. For small business owners and essential workers, however, substitute holidays often translate into “days when everyone else rests, but you can’t.” In a year like 2026, where holidays are densely packed, that gap is likely to feel even wider.

How Vacation Strategies Split the Experience of 2026

On paper, 118 days off looks generous. In practice, the year can feel very different depending on how – or whether – a person can stack their leave.

Those who can align their paid leave with Seollal, Chuseok and key substitute holidays can engineer four or five separate blocks of four days or more. For them, 2026 could be remembered as the year of “finally taking a proper break.”

For others, the picture is less rosy. In sectors where work piles up around holidays – finance and accounting at quarter-ends, manufacturing and logistics facing delivery deadlines, public institutions with fixed service windows – taking leave around big holidays is often difficult or practically impossible. Even on substitute holidays, a skeleton staff may be required to keep operations running.

In that sense, the structure of the calendar is “vacation-friendly,” but the real benefit is unevenly distributed. It flows toward those whose jobs and organizational cultures allow forward planning, and away from those working in time-sensitive or customer-facing roles.

How the Travel and Hospitality Industries See 2026

The travel, aviation and hospitality sectors are already referring to 2026 as a “golden-holiday year.” The logic is simple: whenever public holidays link naturally to weekends or substitute days, three-day or longer breaks appear – and people travel.

Around Seollal and Chuseok, demand is likely to be split between home visits and long-haul or medium-haul overseas trips. During the March 1st, Liberation Day, National Foundation Day and Hangeul Day weekends, the focus will likely shift to two-night, three-day itineraries, both domestic and regional.

Airlines will have to decide which routes to add capacity to and how far to push peak-season pricing. Hotels and resorts, particularly in popular coastal and mountain destinations, will design packages around these predictable surges. For online travel platforms, 2026 is a year made for early-bird campaigns.

But opportunity brings its own kind of inequality. Workers at large corporations or public institutions, who are often able to fix vacation dates months in advance, can grab cheaper airfares and secure high-demand accommodations. Those whose schedules remain uncertain until the last minute will be left to choose between paying more or staying home.

What’s Left for Small Shops and Essential Workers

The story on the ground, in alleys and traditional markets, is more complicated.

During major holidays, foot traffic at local grocers and markets increases as families stock up on food and gifts. Yet there are other stretches – particularly during substitute holiday weekends – when urban commercial districts can feel oddly empty. Crowds drift toward outlet malls on the outskirts of metropolitan areas, large shopping complexes and well-known tourist towns, leaving inner-city small shops in a grey zone where they “neither truly rest, nor earn significantly more.”

For workers in essential services – hospitals, public transport, broadcasting, telecommunications, delivery and logistics – the 2026 calendar can look less like a promise of rest and more like a roster of extra shifts. Every cluster of holidays potentially means more night duty, weekend coverage and time away from family. The officially counted 118 days off do not translate into 118 days of rest for everyone.

This disconnect is at the heart of debates over fairness: the legal framework for holidays is universal, but the ability to enjoy them is deeply stratified.

2026 Public Holidays and Substitute Holidays at a Glance

Below is a chronological list of Korea’s public holidays and substitute holidays in 2026. National holidays, traditional festivals, religious observances and election day are spread across the year, ensuring at least one notable rest period in nearly every month.

These holidays are defined under Korea’s Regulations on Public Holidays in Government Offices. Actual closure policies in the private sector and institutions may differ according to internal rules.

Major Holiday Blocks and Vacation Scenarios

For workers trying to maximize continuous rest while minimizing the number of paid leave days used, 2026 offers several notable combinations. Here are some representative scenarios:

Whether any of these scenarios is realistic depends on the workplace. Approval practices for annual leave, team workloads and the timing of major projects all influence what is possible. For some, these patterns will remain hypothetical.

One Calendar Year, Many Different Lives

At first glance, the 2026 calendar can be summed up simply as “a year with lots of holidays.” Look closer, and it becomes a map of diverging life patterns.

Those who concentrate their leave around Seollal, Chuseok and substitute holidays can build long, restorative breaks into their year. Others may choose to spread short breaks across each quarter, trading deep rest for more frequent pauses. Each strategy shapes not only fatigue and productivity, but also family time, consumption patterns and even mental health.

What is already clear is that holiday-driven surges in demand, peak pricing and reservation bottlenecks are baked into the year ahead. Office workers, small business owners, essential service staff and freelancers will all read the same calendar differently – and make their own calculations.

For some, the 118 days of potential rest will represent a rare “year of opportunity.” For others, it may pass as a year in which the promise of rest remained just out of reach.

The 2026 Calendar at a Glance

To visualize how these holidays and substitute days shape the year, a month-by-month calendar for 2026 is provided below. It brings together national holidays, substitute days and key festive periods in one view, offering a practical reference for planning annual leave, family gatherings and travel.

The public holidays marked on this calendar follow the Regulations on Public Holidays in Government Offices. Individual companies and institutions may adopt different policies on closures and days off, so actual rest days can vary from workplace to workplace.