Make-Up Workdays in China

This site's festivals page says the State Council publishes the arrangement "including the compensating working weekends", and tells you to check it. The month-by-month page says the same thing in almost the same words. Neither says what a compensating working weekend is.

It is called 调休 (tiáo xiū), and it is the mechanism that makes the Chinese calendar legible. China does not have long public holidays. It has short ones, stretched by moving weekends around them — and the weekends are then repaid, on days that are ordinary Saturdays and Sundays everywhere else in the world.

Start with the statute, because the numbers do not match#

The instrument is the 全国年节及纪念日放假办法 (quánguó niánjié jí jìniànrì fàngjià bànfǎ, Measures on Holidays for National Annual Festivals and Memorial Days). It was last amended by State Council Order No. 795, passed at the State Council's 45th executive meeting on 8 November 2024 and in force from 1 January 2025.

Article 2 sets out what every citizen actually gets:

全体公民放假的节日：（一）元旦，放假1天（1月1日）；（二）春节，放假4天（农历除夕、正月初一至初三）；（三）清明节，放假1天（农历清明当日）；（四）劳动节，放假2天（5月1日、2日）；（五）端午节，放假1天（农历端午当日）；（六）中秋节，放假1天（农历中秋当日）；（七）国庆节，放假3天（10月1日至3日）。

Thirteen days. That is the whole entitlement, and it is the number the 2024 amendment raised: it added New Year's Eve to Spring Festival and a second day to Labour Day, both written into the article quoted above.

Now hold that against what actually happens. In 2026 Spring Festival runs nine days and National Day runs seven. Four statutory days become nine; three become seven. Nothing was granted. Weekends were moved.

Article 7, which is new, and which sets a ceiling#

The same 2024 amendment added an article that had never existed before:

The 2026 calendar, as published#

The arrangement for a given year comes in a separate notice each autumn. The one in force is the 国务院办公厅关于2026年部分节假日安排的通知 (guówùyuàn bàngōngtīng guānyú 2026 nián bùfen jiéjiàrì ānpái de tōngzhī, State Council General Office Notice on the Arrangement of Certain Public Holidays for 2026), document 国办发明电〔2025〕7号, published on 4 November 2025.

Six make-up workdays in the year. On each of those six dates the notice says 上班 (shàng bān), go to work — they are working days nationally, not local exceptions.

Three things in that table that surprise people#

Not every holiday borrows. Qingming, Dragon Boat and Mid-Autumn carry no make-up day at all in 2026, because each falls where a weekend already does the work. Four of the seven holidays borrow; three do not. Whether a holiday costs you a Saturday is a property of the year, not of the holiday.

The repayment does not have to sit next to the holiday. The Labour Day make-up Saturday is 9 May — four days after the holiday ended on 5 May. The first National Day make-up day is Sunday 20 September, eleven days before the holiday begins, and it lands five days before the Mid-Autumn break. If you are looking for the borrowed weekend immediately beside the holiday, you will miss half of them.

2026 sits exactly on the new ceiling, twice. Work through the published arrangement day by day and the longest unbroken runs of working days are both six: 4 to 9 January, opened by that first make-up Sunday, and 9 to 14 February, closed by the first Spring Festival make-up Saturday. Article 7's limit is not decorative — the calendar is drawn right up against it, at both ends of the winter.

What this means for a visit#

• A Saturday marked 上班 is a working day, not a weekend. The notice is addressed to provincial governments and to every State Council ministry and agency, so government offices and public service windows run to it. Plan any errand that needs an official counter around the published calendar rather than around the day of the week.
• Holiday crowds start before the holiday. When the borrowed weekend sits ahead of the break, as Sunday 20 September does, the country works through a weekend and then leaves — which front-loads the departure rush rather than spreading it.
• The published dates are the ones to plan against, not the statutory ones. Thirteen days is the legal entitlement; nine and seven are what the country actually takes, and the crowd advice on this site is built around those longer blocks.
• The notice appears about fourteen months ahead at most. The 2026 arrangement was published on 4 November 2025. If you are planning further out than that, you have the statutory dates and the lunar calendar and nothing else.
• The notice says nothing about attractions. It fixes working days and holidays; opening hours are set by each site under its own rules, and the daily visitor caps at scenic areas are approved maximums that do not stretch whatever the working calendar says.
• Hong Kong and Macau set their own public holidays under their own law, so none of the arrangement above applies to a day spent in either.

Checked for newer, and what I could not read#

Order No. 795 and its Articles 2 and 7 were read on the State Council's own site and cross-checked word for word against the Ministry of Commerce's law database, which agrees on both articles, the order number and the commencement date. The 2026 arrangement was read on the State Council site, which supplied its document number and publication date.

One thing this page does not settle. The site says in three places that the rail pre-sale window "has changed several times" and advises planning on roughly two weeks. I could not confirm the current figure on an official railway host — the 12306 release-time page is a query tool rather than a statement of the rule, and returned no policy text. Rather than repeat a number I have not verified, this page says nothing about it, and the three existing pages are left as they stand.

Frequently asked questions#

How many public holidays does China have?#

Thirteen statutory days a year, set by Article 2 of the Measures on Holidays for National Annual Festivals and Memorial Days as amended by State Council Order No. 795: one day for New Year, four for Spring Festival, one each for Qingming, Dragon Boat and Mid-Autumn, two for Labour Day and three for National Day. The longer breaks you see on a calendar are built by moving weekends, not by additional entitlement.

What is 调休 in China?#

The practice of shifting weekends to lengthen a public holiday and then working a Saturday or Sunday to repay them. It is why Spring Festival 2026 runs nine days from thirteen days of annual entitlement, and why six ordinary weekend dates in 2026 are designated working days.

Which Saturdays are working days in China in 2026?#

Under the State Council Office notice of 4 November 2025, six dates are designated working days: Sunday 4 January, Saturday 14 February, Saturday 28 February, Saturday 9 May, Sunday 20 September and Saturday 10 October. Qingming, Dragon Boat and Mid-Autumn require no make-up day in 2026.

How long is the Spring Festival holiday in 2026?#

Nine days, from Sunday 15 February to Monday 23 February. The statutory entitlement inside that is four days — New Year's Eve and the first three days of the lunar year — with the rest assembled from two borrowed weekends, repaid on 14 and 28 February.

Can Chinese workers be made to work more than six days in a row?#

The 2024 amendment added Article 7, which says that except in individual special circumstances, continuous work before and after a statutory holiday shall generally not exceed six days. Both hedges are in the text. It is the first written limit on the practice, and the published 2026 calendar peaks at exactly six, in the week ending 9 January.

When does China publish its holiday dates for the following year?#

In the autumn of the preceding year, as a State Council Office notice. The 2026 arrangement was issued on 4 November 2025. Before that notice appears, only the statutory day counts and the lunar dates are fixed, so trips planned more than about a year out cannot be checked against a make-up workday calendar.