Kenya Public Holidays: Official Dates and Compliance

Public holidays in Kenya affect payroll, scheduling, and what you owe if someone works that day. If you are hiring in Kenya, you need the official holiday list, a clear rule for holiday pay, and a reliable way to document exceptions when work still happens.

This guide gives you the 2026 holiday calendar and the rules HR and finance teams need. It also explains what counts as a gazetted holiday, when a holiday moves, and how to handle premium pay without turning payroll into a manual clean-up project.

Kenya public holiday calendar 2026

Quick note: if a public holiday falls on a Sunday, the next working day that is not already a public holiday becomes the holiday instead.

What counts as a public holiday in Kenya

In Kenya, a public holiday is either listed in the Public Holidays Act or formally declared through a Gazette notice. That is what “gazetted” means. It is a date the government has officially recognized.

Some holidays are fixed. New Year’s Day, Labour Day, Madaraka Day, Mashujaa Day, Jamhuri Day, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day are all tied to set dates in the calendar. Others move. Good Friday and Easter Monday follow the Christian calendar. Eid ul-Fitr and Eid al-Adha depend on the religious calendar and may be confirmed close to the date. For 2026, Friday, March 20, 2026, was declared a public holiday to mark Idd ul-Fitr.

It is also worth separating public holidays from company days off. Your business might offer an extra closure day in December or a team wellness day. That can be a paid day off under company policy, but it is not the same thing as a statutory public holiday. Payroll should treat those days differently.

Do employees get public holidays off with pay?

Usually, yes. Kenya’s wage rules treat the scheduled public holidays as holidays with full pay. The Regulation of Wages (General) Order states that public holidays are holidays with full pay, and it makes clear that annual leave is separate from public holidays and weekly rest days.

For monthly salaried employees, that usually means the employee gets the day off without a pay reduction. For daily and hourly workers, the outcome depends more heavily on how the contract is written, what the wage order requires, and whether the employee actually worked on the holiday.

Not every workforce looks the same. Shift-based employees, security teams, healthcare workers, hospitality staff, and other operational roles may still be scheduled to work. Some employees may also be covered by a collective agreement or sector-specific rules that go further than the general standard. That is why the best approach is to align your contracts, policy language, and payroll codes well before the holiday arrives.

Pay rules if employees work on a public holiday

This is usually the question that matters most.

Kenya’s general wage order states that time worked on an employee’s normal rest day or public holiday is paid at twice the normal hourly rate. For monthly paid employees, the same order provides a formula for converting monthly basic pay into an hourly rate where needed.

That gives you a practical framework to work from.

• Confirm the day is official. Check the law or Gazette notice, especially for religious holidays.
• Track actual hours worked. Premium pay should be based on time worked, not just the published schedule.
• Use one payroll rule. Apply the same calculation method every time so managers are not making judgment calls at the last minute.
• Keep the math visible. Your payroll record should show the base rate, hours worked, premium rate, and final amount paid.

If an employee works only part of the holiday, record the actual hours worked and apply the premium to those hours. Don’t treat a two-hour shift the same way you would treat a full day’s work.

Overlap can make things messy. If a public holiday lands on the employee’s normal rest day, or if the employee works a holiday that also affects a scheduled day off, you should check your contract terms and policy language carefully. The law gives employers room to set agreed conditions around rates of pay and days off in lieu, but the important part is consistency. You do not want one team handling holiday work one way and another team doing the opposite.

Substitute day rules

Kenya’s Public Holidays Act includes a clear substitution rule. If a Part I public holiday falls on a Sunday, the next succeeding day that is not already a public holiday becomes the holiday instead.

Employers may also choose to offer a substitute day off in some situations, but that should sit in a contract, handbook, policy, or other written arrangement. Holiday work should not live in a gray area.

A simple system usually works best:

• Use separate codes. Create distinct payroll and time-tracking codes for public holiday leave, public holiday worked, and substitute day off.
• Record why the day moved. Note whether it moved because of the Sunday rule or because the employer granted a day in lieu.
• Approve the exception. A short written approval can prevent a long payroll dispute later.

Compliance checklist for employers in Kenya

Holiday compliance gets easier when your process is boring.

• Confirm official dates each year. Religious holidays can change, so your calendar should be updated from official notices.
• Set payroll codes early. Waiting until payroll closes is how avoidable mistakes happen.
• Align contracts and policies. Your documents should say what happens when an employee works on a public holiday.
• Keep time records. Premium pay is hard to defend if you cannot show the hours worked.
• Store your backup. Keep holiday notices, approvals, and payroll calculations together in case you need an audit trail.

If your team is comparing leave practices across markets, our guide to paid vacation days by country can help you separate statutory leave from public holiday rules. And if you are reviewing year-end pay practices more broadly, this overview of holiday bonuses in seven countries is a useful next read.

FAQs

What happens when the government announces a holiday late?

It happens, especially with religious holidays. Your payroll and HR teams should be ready to update calendars, rosters, and pay codes quickly when an official notice comes through.

Are bank holidays different from public holidays in Kenya?

For employer compliance, the question is not what a day is called in conversation. The question is whether it is an official public holiday under Kenyan law or an official notice.

Can you require employees to work on a public holiday?

In some roles, yes. But if employees work on a public holiday, the pay treatment and any substitute day arrangement should follow the applicable legal and contractual rules.

What if the public holiday falls on a weekend?

If it falls on a Sunday, the next working day that is not already a public holiday becomes the substitute holiday. That rule comes straight from the Public Holidays Act.

How an Employer of Record (EOR) can help

An employer of record is a third party that legally employs your team member in Kenya on your behalf. This allows you to hire without establishing a local entity, avoiding the hidden costs of entity establishment.

The EOR handles salary offers, employment contracts, payroll, tax withholding, statutory benefits, and all ongoing compliance. You manage the day-to-day work normally while the EOR takes care of just about everything else.

For employers testing the market, or those who need to scale quickly, an EOR is usually the right choice. You get to reduce risk, move faster, and know all local laws and regulations will be followed.

Pebl handles holiday pay in Kenya

If you’re hiring in Kenya, you need a clear, repeatable way to manage public holiday pay and any premium pay when work is required. There’s a lot of other things that need to be taken care of too—researching taxes, finding experts in local labor law, finding a payroll processor, and more. It takes a lot of time and a lot of money. Wouldn’t it be great if there were an easier way?

With Pebl, there is.

Our EOR platform allows you to hire, pay, and manage employees in 185+ countries around the world without setting up your own local entity. That means your new talent starts in days, not months. We handle it all: onboarding, benefits, salary benchmarking, payroll, and compliance with all local regulations. Every public holiday, overtime or double time pay the law requires, we make sure it happens. All you have to do is stay focused on leading your team.

When you’re ready to do things the easy way, let us know.

This information does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal or tax advice and is for general informational purposes only. The intent of this document is solely to provide general and preliminary information for private use. Do not rely on it as an alternative to legal, financial, taxation, or accountancy advice from an appropriately qualified professional. The content in this guide is provided “as is,” and no representations are made that the content is error-free.

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