Hijri New Year (Islamic New Year) 2027

Type of holiday: statutory public holiday, a non-working day.

Hijri New Year, 1 Muharram, opens the Islamic lunar year and is a single public holiday in the UAE. Anyone expecting the scale of 31 December will find it a very different occasion: there are no countdowns, no fireworks and no street parties. It is a marker rather than a festival, observed quietly, and for most residents its practical content is a day off and, in years when the Cabinet arranges it well, a three-day weekend.

What the year counts from

The epoch is the Hijra, the migration of the Prophet Mohammed and his followers from Makkah to Madinah in 622 CE — chosen not for a birth or a battle but for the moment the community established itself, which is why the calendar is named after it. Years are written AH, for anno Hegirae. In the UAE the Hijri date is not ceremonial: it appears on federal legislation, court documents, official gazettes and much government correspondence, usually alongside the Gregorian date.

The eleven-day drift, explained once

Twelve lunar months come to about 354 days, occasionally 355, against 365 or 366 in a solar year. The Hijri calendar inserts no leap month to close that gap — unlike the Hebrew and Chinese calendars, which do exactly that to stay anchored to the seasons. The consequence is a calendar that floats freely: every Islamic date moves about eleven days earlier in the Gregorian year, every year, and completes a full circuit of the seasons in roughly thirty-three years. That single fact explains the behaviour of five of the twelve UAE public holidays.

The day off and the day itself need not be the same day

Cabinet Resolution No. 27 of 2024 allows a public holiday other than the two Eids to be moved to the beginning or end of the working week. In 2026 that power was used here: 1 Muharram 1448 fell on Tuesday 16 June, and the day off was declared for Monday 15 June, producing a break from Saturday to Monday. The religious date and the non-working date were simply two different days, and neither was wrong.

For counting, one statutory day comes out of the working-day total — and it is the declared day, not the astronomical one, that is deducted. For years still ahead, the date shown on this site is the calculated one with no transfer applied, because a transfer is a decision rather than a rule and cannot be predicted. Government offices, schools and banks close; retail and hospitality continue as normal.