How Many Working Days Are in a Year in the UAE?

·Published: 8 August 2026

The UAE has 251 working days in 2026, 253 in 2027 and 255 in 2028 under the calendar used here. These totals assume a Monday-to-Friday working pattern, Saturday and Sunday weekends, and the listed federal public holidays. They are useful starting points for annual leave, staffing and project schedules, but the figures for future years remain provisional because several Islamic holidays depend on lunar observation.

How the annual total is calculated

The basic calculation starts with every calendar day and removes weekends and federal holidays that fall on working days. For 2026, begin with 365 days. After accounting for Saturdays, Sundays and applicable weekday holidays, 251 working days remain. The same method gives 253 working days from 365 days in 2027 and 255 from the 366 days of leap year 2028.

You should not simply subtract every public-holiday entry from 365 after removing the weekends. A holiday on Saturday or Sunday is already inside the weekend total, so subtracting it again would count the same non-working day twice. In 2028, for example, New Year’s Day falls on Saturday. It appears in the holiday calendar, but it does not remove an additional Monday-to-Friday working day under this calculation.

The number also describes a standard calendar rather than every employee’s actual schedule. Hospitality, aviation, healthcare, retail and other continuously operating sectors may use rotating shifts. A private employer may arrange weekly rest days differently, while a government body may follow its own published hours. For personal planning, compare the calendar total with your contract, roster and confirmed leave record.

Why the 2022 working-week change matters

From January 2022, the UAE federal government adopted a working week aligned with a Saturday-and-Sunday weekend. Dubai government departments also moved to Monday through Thursday with a Friday half-day and Saturday and Sunday off. Before the change, the familiar pattern across much of the country was a Sunday-to-Thursday working week with Friday and Saturday as the weekend. This means older spreadsheets and project templates may place weekends on the wrong dates if you reuse them for a current plan.

For a broad Monday-to-Friday calculation, Friday counts as a working day and Sunday does not. However, a day count does not measure working hours: a full Friday at one workplace and a shorter Friday at another both occupy one calendar working day. If your project depends on available staff-hours, calculate those separately instead of multiplying the number of days by a single daily figure.

How lunar holidays affect the answer

Several UAE public holidays follow the Hijri calendar, and their corresponding Gregorian dates depend on observation of the moon. The official holiday framework is established through Cabinet decisions, while the relevant authorities confirm the observed dates. A date displayed months or years ahead therefore works as a planning date, not an irreversible appointment. An official announcement can place the holiday differently from an early calendar estimate, and an authorised transfer may also affect when eligible employees receive a day off.

Eid breaks need particular care because they cover several consecutive dates. In 2026, the supplied calendar lists Eid Al Fitr on 20–22 March, while Arafah Day and Eid Al Adha run from 26–29 May. To count either break, mark every listed date, identify which ones fall on Monday through Friday, and subtract only those weekday dates that have not already been removed as weekends. This produces a more reliable result than treating the entire Eid period as a fixed number of extra weekdays.

The holiday framework describes Eid Al Fitr as 29 Ramadan through 3 Shawwal, with an additional official holiday when Ramadan completes 30 days. Arafah Day and Eid Al Adha cover 9–12 Dhu Al Hijjah. Their spans are expressed in Hijri dates, so their positions within the Gregorian week change from year to year. In 2027, for instance, the supplied calendar places Eid Al Fitr on Tuesday through Thursday, whereas the 2028 entries extend from Saturday through Monday. The two breaks therefore remove different numbers of ordinary weekdays even when their religious structure is comparable.

Using the figure for leave and project planning

For an annual leave plan, start with the published working-day total, then remove your leave allowance, organisation-specific closures and any days when your roster does not require work. For a project, keep a baseline calendar and a second scenario that shifts provisional lunar holidays by a day. That small buffer helps when milestones sit near Eid, when colleagues may also combine annual leave with the public break or travel between emirates and overseas.

Update the schedule after each official holiday announcement rather than treating a future total as final. The 2026 figure is 251 working days, the 2027 figure is 253, and the 2028 figure is 255 under the stated assumptions. Those numbers answer the calendar question consistently, while your usable working time still depends on Friday hours, shift arrangements, annual leave and the final observed dates of lunar holidays.