Korea added two public holidays this year. Constitution Day came back on 17 July after eighteen years off the calendar, and 1 May became an official holiday for the first time. Most English-language holiday guides still print the old list, so if you planned a trip around a calendar you found in January, it is worth checking again.
Today is one of them. 15 August is Liberation Day, it falls on a Saturday this year, and that means Monday 17 August is a substitute holiday. Banks and government offices are shut for three days straight.
This guide is about dates and the rule that generates them, not about what any single museum does. Korea's substitute-holiday rule is mechanical once you know it, and knowing it tells you which three-day weekends are still ahead this year.
What is left on the 2026 calendar
Four public holidays remain after today, and three of them produce a long weekend.
| Holiday | Date | Day | Substitute | Days off in a row |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Liberation Day | 15 August | Saturday | 17 August (Mon) | 3 |
| Chuseok | 24–26 September | Thu–Sat | none | 4 |
| National Foundation Day | 3 October | Saturday | 5 October (Mon) | 3 |
| Hangeul Day | 9 October | Friday | none | 3 |
| Christmas Day | 25 December | Friday | none | 3 |
Two of those weekends sit two days apart. The 3rd and the 9th of October are both holidays, so the first ten days of October carry two separate three-day breaks. If you are choosing between early and late October for a trip, that matters more than the weather difference.
The substitute-holiday rule, in one paragraph
When a listed holiday lands on a day people already have off, the next working day becomes a holiday instead. That is why Saturday 15 August produces Monday 17 August, and Saturday 3 October produces Monday 5 October.
The rule does not cover every holiday. It applies to Seollal and Chuseok, Children's Day, Independence Movement Day, Liberation Day, National Foundation Day and Hangeul Day. Memorial Day on 6 June is deliberately excluded — it is a day of national remembrance rather than a celebration, so it does not generate a substitute when it collides with a weekend.
Why Chuseok gets no substitute this year
This is the part that confuses people, because Chuseok is the holiday most likely to be extended and this year it is not.
Chuseok runs for three days: the day before, the day itself, and the day after. In 2026 that is Thursday 24, Friday 25 and Saturday 26 September. The last of the three lands on a Saturday.
A substitute day is triggered when a holiday overlaps with a Sunday or another public holiday. Saturday is neither. It is a normal non-working day for most people, but it is not a public holiday in the legal sense, so nothing is lost and nothing is added back.
The practical effect is still four days off, because Sunday 27 September follows immediately. But Monday 28 September is a normal working day. Offices reopen, banks reopen, and the roads clear.
What actually closes
Here is where visitors get the wrong idea. A Korean public holiday is not a shutdown. On most of them the country runs close to a normal Sunday.
The Korea Tourism Organization puts it plainly: government offices and banks close, while palaces, museums, department stores and amusement facilities remain open during most holidays. The Seoul city guide says the same thing from the other direction — shops and businesses in Korea are typically open seven days a week and most holidays.
| Ordinary holiday (Liberation Day, Foundation Day, Hangeul Day, Christmas) | Seollal and Chuseok | |
|---|---|---|
| Government offices, banks | Closed | Closed |
| Palaces, museums | Open | Open, often with events |
| Department stores, theme parks | Open | Many closed |
| Restaurants, shops | Mostly open | Many closed |
The palaces are the clearest example. Gyeongbokgung keeps its published hours and ticket prices through public holidays — the numbers we set out in the Gyeongbokgung guide do not change because it is Liberation Day. What changes is how many people are standing in front of Gwanghwamun.
So the only genuine disruption on the 2026 calendar is Chuseok. Liberation Day weekend, the October pair and Christmas all behave like busy Sundays: more crowds, everything open, banks shut.
Chuseok is the one to plan around
Chuseok is the harvest holiday and the biggest domestic travel event of the year. Millions of people go to their hometowns at the same time, in both directions, over the same four days.
What that means for a visitor:
- Intercity travel gets hard. Trains and express buses out of Seoul fill up well in advance, and highway journeys take far longer than usual.
- Small restaurants close. Family-run places often shut for the whole stretch. Chains and convenience stores generally do not.
- Seoul itself gets quieter. A large share of the city leaves. If you stay put, the streets and subways are the emptiest they will be all year.
- Cultural sites lean in. Palaces and museums run folk programmes over the holiday rather than closing.
The counter-intuitive advice is that Chuseok is a good time to be in Seoul and a bad time to be moving between cities. If your itinerary has you sitting still from 24 to 27 September, you will have an unusually calm version of the city. If it has you taking a train to Busan on the 24th, book early or move the date.
Banks, and why it matters more than you think
Banks close on every public holiday, including the substitute Mondays. For a visitor that affects three things: currency exchange at bank counters, opening or servicing an account, and anything that needs a teller.
ATMs keep running, and card payments are unaffected. Korea runs on cards to an unusual degree, so a closed bank branch is rarely a crisis. But if your plan involves exchanging cash at a bank on Monday 17 August, that plan does not work this year.
We covered the fuller picture of cards, cash and ATMs in Money in Korea, including which foreign cards tend to fail at which machines.
Getting around on a holiday
Subways and buses run on holidays. Timetables shift to the weekend pattern on public holidays, which generally means slightly wider gaps between trains outside rush hour and, on some lines, a different last train.
Fares do not change for holidays. The distance-based structure and the transfer rules work exactly as they do on any other day, which we walked through in the Seoul subway rules — tapping out still matters, the thirty-minute transfer window still applies.
One thing that does change is crowding. Long weekends push domestic tourism, so intercity trains, airport routes and popular day-trip destinations fill up. The airport railway on the Friday before a three-day weekend is not the same experience as a Tuesday morning.
A note on the two new holidays
Constitution Day, 17 July, commemorates the promulgation of Korea's constitution in 1948. It was a public holiday for decades, then lost that status in 2008 when the country moved to a five-day working week and trimmed the holiday list. It was restored for 2026.
Workers' Day, 1 May, has long been a paid day off for employees under labour law, but it was not a public holiday in the sense that government offices closed. From 2026 it is.
Both changes came through an amendment to the holiday act promulgated in February 2026, with the cabinet approving the corresponding rules on government office closures in April. Neither falls in the remainder of this year, but they change the shape of the 2027 calendar, and they explain why older English guides list twelve holidays where the tourism authority now lists fourteen.
What I could not confirm
A few things are deliberately missing from this guide because I could not verify them against an official source.
- Individual venue closing days. Some palaces and museums have a fixed weekly closing day, and a few close on Seollal and Chuseok themselves. I could not reach the official English pages for those institutions, so I am not going to guess. Check the venue's own site before you go.
- Exact holiday timetables for the subway and buses. The weekend pattern applies, but I could not find an official English statement of first and last train times by line for holidays.
- Pharmacy and clinic hours over the holidays. Emergency rooms operate continuously, and there is a rota system for holiday pharmacies, but I could not confirm the English-language lookup route.
The short version
- Korea has fourteen public holidays in 2026, two of them newly added.
- Four remain after today: Chuseok 24–26 September, Foundation Day 3 October, Hangeul Day 9 October, Christmas 25 December — plus the substitute Mondays on 17 August and 5 October.
- A substitute day appears when a holiday hits a Sunday or another holiday. Saturday does not count, which is why Chuseok gets none this year.
- Banks and government offices close. Almost everything else stays open, except during Chuseok.
OFFICIAL SITE — Korea Tourism Organization
Sources
- Korea Tourism Organization (VISITKOREA), Public Holidays — the 2026 list, substitute dates, and what closes
- Seoul Metropolitan Government official travel guide, National Holidays — business and shop opening patterns
- Korean press reporting on the 2026 amendment restoring Constitution Day and adding Workers' Day
Checked 15 August 2026. Dates come from the Korea Tourism Organization's published calendar; individual venues set their own opening hours.
