New Year's Day on the 1st is the only public holiday in January, and the only one on the UAE calendar fixed to the Gregorian year rather than the Hijri one. Where it lands on a Saturday or Sunday it is not moved: the Cabinet resolution of 2024 rules out substitute days, so a holiday that falls on the weekend is absorbed by it and nothing is given back later in January.
Of the 31 days of January 2026, only the 1st comes out of the working count beyond the weekends. The working week runs Monday to Friday with Saturday and Sunday off, the arrangement the federal government adopted at the start of 2022, and the Friday itself is shortened — government offices finish at noon for the congregational prayer and a large share of the private sector follows the same pattern.
The turn from January into February takes the country deeper into the only stretch of the year in which a walk at midday is an ordinary thing to do. January 2026 hands over the last of the festival season to a month with no fixed holiday, shortened working hours in every year of this decade, and the first sign of the warmth returning at its far end.
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