The Philippine government just released the official list of holidays for 2023, so we just updated the Philippine Holiday Calendar to include them. If you haven’t subscribed to that calendar yet, you’ll see them below:
Regular Holidays
January 1 (Sunday) – New Year’s Day
April 9 (Sunday) – Araw ng Kagitingan
April 6 – Maundy Thursday
April 7 – Good Friday
* April 22 (Saturday) – Eid’l Fitr *
* June 29 (Thursday) – Eid’l Adha *
May 1 (Monday) – Labor Day
June 12 (Monday) – Independence Day
August 28 (last Monday of August) – National Heroes Day
November 30 (Thursday) – Bonifacio Day
December 25 (Monday) – Christmas Day
December 30 (Saturday) – Rizal Day
Special Non-Working Days
February 25 (Saturday) – EDSA People Power Revolution Anniversary
April 8 – Black Saturday
August 21 (Monday) – Ninoy Aquino Day
November 1 (Wednesday) – All Saints’ Day
November 2 (Thursday) – All Souls’ Day
December 8 (Friday) – Feast of the Immaculate Concepcion of Mary
December 31 (Sunday) – Last Day of the Year
Looking at the 2023 calendar, you’ll notice a couple of changes.
Change #1: No more special working holidays.
Now, it’s just two types of holidays: regular and special holidays.
The difference between regular and special only matters if you have a legal entity in the Philippines because there’s a pay difference if they work during the holidays.
If you want to offer paid time off during these days, you can choose to offer it only for regular holidays or both. Offering both would be nice, especially for families, because special holidays are also school holidays. This will let them spend more time with their kids.
Change #2: Inclusion of Eid’l Fitr and Eid’l Adha
Eid’l Fitr and Eid’l Adha are Islamic holidays (the dates with the asterisks) considered regular holidays under Philippine law.
If you check the official list sent out by the Philippine government (https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/nationwide-holidays/2023/) those holidays are not included because they have to wait for declarations from Islamic officials. The dates are usually declared just 2-3 days ahead. It’s really short notice.
There are approximate dates for when these holidays would be. So instead of waiting for the declaration, we included those dates in the calendar and just modify them once the official dates are announced.
When I saw the list of holidays above I thought “that’s a lot!” so I looked up the number of US holidays in 2022. There are more US holidays than “Regular Holidays” in the Philippines (13US vs 12 Philippine)! But when you add in the “Special Non Working Days” the Philippines has more.
At OnlineJobs.ph we also give Dec 26-30 off…but that’s mostly because I don’t want to work those days.
John
PS. My daughters are now into their mountain bike racing season. Race 2 just happened. It was hot (95 degrees at 6500 feet) and hard. Taking second place (both of them) made up for the struggle. Here’s Addie at the finish line:
The Calendar Link doesn’t appear to work? It says unable to add calendar, please check URL.
Hi! What kind of device are you using. If you are using a Mac, you can use this link: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/lcvk4qcjgj299mlqs7b02b7pmk%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
Thank you for pointing this out. We’ll update the link right away