The 2026 Philippine Holiday Calendar Your VA Is Working Around

Most foreign employers discover the Philippine holiday calendar the same way. It is a Thursday, the work does not arrive, the messages go unanswered, and a quick search turns up something called Araw ng Kagitingan that nobody mentioned during onboarding. Nothing went wrong. Your VA is simply in a country with a fuller public holiday calendar than yours, and you were the only person in the arrangement who did not have it marked.

I run Galasya from the Philippines, so I have this conversation several times a year. It usually arrives bundled with a second question: do I owe my VA holiday pay for those days? The honest answer to that one is more interesting than most guides admit, and it is worth separating cleanly from the coverage problem. I am not a lawyer and none of this is legal advice. It is the practical read from someone who plans around these dates.

The short answer

There are 21 declared non-working or specially designated days in the Philippines in 2026: 12 regular holidays, 8 special non-working days, and 1 special working day. Every one of the 12 regular holidays falls on a weekday this year, so none of them get quietly absorbed by a weekend. The Philippine pay multipliers attached to those days, 200 percent for a worked regular holiday and so on, are Labor Code obligations owed by employers to employees. If you are a business abroad paying a genuine independent contractor, they are not a bill you owe. They are still the benchmark your VA is comparing you against, and matching the regular holidays costs about 4.6 percent of an annual contract. The rest of this post gives you the dates, the arithmetic, and a coverage plan.

The full 2026 Philippine holiday calendar

The base list comes from Proclamation No. 1006, signed in September 2025, which set 10 regular holidays, 8 special non-working days, and 1 special working day. The two Islamic holidays are never in that proclamation because their dates depend on the lunar calendar. They were declared separately during the year: Proclamation No. 1189 made Friday 20 March a regular holiday for Eid'l Fitr, and Proclamation No. 1264 made Wednesday 27 May a regular holiday for Eid'l Adha. That takes the real 2026 total to 12 regular holidays, not 10, which matters when you price this.

Two of the special non-working days, Black Saturday on 4 April and All Saints' Day on 1 November, land on a weekend. For a VA working Monday to Friday, that leaves 18 weekday days off across the year: all 12 regular holidays plus 6 special non-working days. Nine of those create a three day weekend, six on a Friday and three on a Monday.

25 February is a working day, not a holiday

This one catches people from both directions. The EDSA People Power Revolution Anniversary on Wednesday 25 February 2026 is declared a special working day, marking the 40th anniversary. Work and classes continue as normal, and an employee who works it is paid an ordinary day's wage with no premium at all. If your VA tells you they are off on 25 February, that is a personal decision rather than a national holiday, and it is worth asking about rather than assuming. The same logic runs the other way: do not plan for an outage that is not happening.

The two windows that will actually hurt

Spread evenly, 18 days off is barely noticeable. They are not spread evenly. Two clusters do most of the damage, and both are predictable enough to plan around a year ahead.

Holy Week, 2 to 4 April. Maundy Thursday and Good Friday are both regular holidays, and Black Saturday is a special non-working day. In practice the Philippines slows down for the whole week, not just the declared days, and a great many people travel to their home province. Then Araw ng Kagitingan lands on Thursday 9 April, the very next Thursday. April 2026 loses three weekdays in eight calendar days.

The Christmas stretch, 24 December to 1 January. This is the harder one. Christmas Eve is a special non-working day, Christmas Day is a regular holiday, then the weekend, then Rizal Day on Wednesday 30 December, the Last Day of the Year on Thursday 31 December, and New Year's Day on Friday 1 January 2027. Across those nine calendar days, exactly two are ordinary Philippine working days: Monday 28 and Tuesday 29 December. If your business has a year end crunch, that is the window to staff around, and December is also when Philippine family obligations are heaviest.

What a Philippine holiday actually costs you in coverage

Here is the part that trips up planning even when people have the dates. A holiday attaches to the Philippine calendar day, which runs on Philippine Standard Time at UTC plus 8. Your business day sits somewhere else on that clock, so a single Philippine holiday usually eats the tail of one of your days and the front of the next. Take a Philippine holiday falling on a Thursday, which describes seven of the 2026 dates.

Australian clients get the cleanest mapping and US Pacific clients the messiest. If your VA works a night shift to overlap your daytime, the ambiguity gets sharper still, because it is genuinely unclear whether the shift starting on Thursday evening in Manila belongs to Thursday or Friday. Settle that in writing once, at the start, and you never argue about it again.

What Philippine law requires, and who it requires it from

The Department of Labor and Employment publishes the multipliers every year. For 2026 they sit in Labor Advisory No. 12-25, and they work like this.

The 100 percent for an unworked regular holiday carries a condition: the employee has to have reported for work, or been on paid leave, on the day immediately before. Overtime stacks on top, so overtime on a regular holiday runs at the hourly rate times 200 percent times 130 percent.

Now the part the multiplier tables never say out loud. Every one of those numbers comes from the Labor Code, and the Labor Code governs the relationship between an employer and an employee in the Philippines. It has coverage limits even domestically: government workers, managerial staff, field personnel, and retail or service establishments with fewer than ten workers all sit outside the holiday pay article. A foreign business paying an independent contractor for agreed deliverables is outside it too. Nobody is going to invoice you 200 percent for 25 December.

The catch, which is the same catch as always

You do not get to pick the category by writing it on a contract. Philippine tribunals apply the four-fold test: who selected and engaged the worker, who pays them, who can dismiss them, and who holds the power of control. Control decides nearly every case, and the control that counts is control over the means and methods of the work, not just the result. A fixed shift you set and enforce, monitoring software, exclusivity, and approval for leave rather than notice of unavailability all point one way.

If that description fits your arrangement, holiday pay stops being an optional courtesy and becomes one line in a much longer bill that also includes 13th month pay, service incentive leave, and statutory contributions. My guide to the 2026 Philippine minimum wage and your VA works through that test in detail and prices what an employer of record arrangement actually costs. The companion piece on tax forms for a Filipino VA covers the paperwork side of keeping the contractor classification honest.

What a fair contractor holiday policy costs

So you do not owe it. The question worth asking instead is what it costs to offer it anyway, because the answer is smaller than most people assume and the retention effect is real. A Filipino VA weighing your offer against a local job is comparing a rate with no paid holidays against one with 12 of them baked in.

The clean version of the policy is to mirror Philippine law rather than invent something: paid time off on the regular holidays, no work no pay on the special non-working days, and a premium if you genuinely need coverage on a regular holiday. Here is what the paid days cost on a full time engagement at 8 hours a day.

Against a standard 261 day working year, 12 paid holidays is 4.6 percent of the contract and all 18 days is 6.9 percent. For a mid level VA at $8 an hour, the generous version of this policy costs $1,152 a year. That is less than the cost of one bad month after someone leaves, and it is roughly what you would spend rehiring and re-onboarding. If you need coverage on a holiday instead, paying a 100 percent premium on the day mirrors the Philippine 200 percent rule and adds $64 for that day at the same rate.

For context on where those hourly numbers come from, my 2026 guide to Filipino virtual assistant rates breaks the market down by experience and skill.

A coverage plan you can set up in an hour

• Put all 21 dates in your own calendar now, in your own timezone, with the classification in the event title. Not your VA's calendar, yours.
• Decide once, in writing, whether the holiday attaches to the Philippine calendar day or to the shift, and which of your business days it blocks.
• Treat 2 to 9 April and 24 December to 1 January as planned reduced capacity rather than surprises. Move deadlines off them in advance.
• Agree a named exception list up front: which holidays, if any, you may ask for coverage on, at what premium, with how much notice.
• Write the policy into the engagement document before the first invoice. My first VA hiring checklist covers what else belongs in there.
• If you need continuous coverage across the Christmas stretch, hire a second person for it rather than pressuring one. Cost that in when you scope the role.

Frequently asked questions

How many holidays does the Philippines have in 2026?

Twenty one declared days: 12 regular holidays, 8 special non-working days, and 1 special working day. Proclamation No. 1006 set 10 regular holidays, and Eid'l Fitr on 20 March and Eid'l Adha on 27 May were proclaimed separately once the lunar dates were confirmed. Every regular holiday in 2026 falls on a weekday.

Do I have to pay my Filipino VA holiday pay?

Not if they are a genuine independent contractor and you are a business based abroad. The DOLE multipliers come from the Labor Code, which governs employers and employees in the Philippines. They become your obligation if you hire through an employer of record, or if the way you run the relationship makes it employment under the four-fold test regardless of what your contract says.

What are the 2026 Philippine holiday pay rates?

For employees, a regular holiday pays 100 percent of the daily wage if unworked, 200 percent for the first eight hours if worked, and 260 percent if worked on a rest day. A special non-working day is no work, no pay, 130 percent if worked, and 150 percent if worked on a rest day. The special working day on 25 February pays an ordinary day's wage.

Is 25 February 2026 a holiday in the Philippines?

No. The EDSA People Power Revolution Anniversary on Wednesday 25 February 2026 is a special working day. Work and classes continue as usual, and there is no premium for working it.

Which 2026 Philippine holidays affect coverage the most?

Holy Week from 2 to 4 April, immediately followed by Araw ng Kagitingan on 9 April, and the stretch from 24 December to 1 January where only Monday 28 and Tuesday 29 December are ordinary working days. Plan deadlines away from both windows.

What should I budget for a holiday policy?

Paying the 12 regular holidays as paid time off costs about 4.6 percent of a full time annual contract, and covering all 18 weekday days off costs about 6.9 percent. At $8 an hour that is $768 or $1,152 a year respectively.

The calendar is fixed and public, so there is no good reason to be surprised by it. Mark the dates, decide your policy once, and hire knowing exactly which days you are planning around.