2027 calendar

2027 begins on a Friday, so New Year's Day removes the short working day at the end of the week and hands the country a three-day break with no leave spent on it. Ramadan starts on Monday 8 February and runs through to early March under the shortened working day. Eid Al Fitr then falls on Tuesday 9, Wednesday 10 and Thursday 11 March — all three inside the working week, which is the most generous arrangement the holiday can take and removes three full days from the March count.

Arafah Day falls on Saturday 15 May and Eid Al Adha on the Sunday, Monday and Tuesday after it, so two of the four days land on the weekend and are simply lost: the 2024 Cabinet resolution rules out moving a holiday that collides with a rest day. The Hijri New Year holiday on Sunday 6 June disappears the same way. Between them, May and June deliver less time off than the dates suggest, in the weeks when the afternoon reading climbs past 40°C and the sea has stopped being a way to cool down.

The Prophet Mohammed's Birthday holiday falls on Saturday 14 August and takes no working day with it. That leaves the stretch from the middle of May to the start of December without a single weekday holiday, the longest such gap in these five years, and it runs straight through the hottest and most humid part of the calendar. Schools return in the last week of August into that heat, Emirati Women's Day passes on the 28th as an ordinary working day, and the first outdoor assemblies wait until October.

Eid Al Etihad falls on Thursday 2 and Friday 3 December, and with the weekend attached it produces a four-day run at the start of the month — the most useful arrangement the national holiday takes in this five-year window. Europe puts its clocks back on 31 October, the latest date the change can fall, so the gap to London holds at three hours for an extra week. The year closes on Friday 31 December after 365 days, with the racing, the outdoor markets and the desert camping season all running at once.