Date lists answer the question "is Thursday a holiday in Korea?" They do not answer the questions that actually cost money: how long the mainland Chinese Spring Festival break really runs once weekend swaps are counted, what happens to a Japanese national holiday that lands on a Sunday, why the Indonesian Lebaran shutdown is longer than the gazetted days suggest, or which single week of 2026 is the worst one to fly into Taipei. These guides are written for the people who have to make those calls: travel and events planners, supply-chain and logistics staff, HR and payroll teams covering more than one jurisdiction, and distributed engineering teams whose on-call rota spans eight time zones. Each article takes one problem, names the legal mechanism behind it, works through the real 2026 dates, and says plainly which option we would choose and why. Where a date depends on a government notice, a cabinet decision or a moon sighting, we say so instead of pretending to certainty. The Chinese-language set is a separate manuscript, not a translation of this page. Start with how we compile dates if you need to know whether a figure is a gazette fact or an editorial judgement.
Read the country pages when you need a date. Read these essays when you need a rule. The pieces below are independent manuscripts on China and Japan, coverage calendars, Lunar New Year length, US federal practice, Southeast Asian freight, substitute-day machinery, business-travel windows, and sources. None of them is a recap of the calendar grid. If a date in an essay disagrees with a country table, the table wins — regenerating the site copies both from the same holiday file.
A practical reading order for a new operations lead: start with how we compile dates, then the coverage-calendar method, then the essay that matches the first market you actually owe an obligation to. Skip the rest until a collision week is on the horizon. The Chinese-language column is a different set of arguments written for a different reader, not a mirror of this list.
- How China tiaoxiu works, and how to read the 2026 arrangement — Mainland China assembles long breaks by swapping weekends for weekdays. Here is how tiaoxiu works, who it binds, and how to read 2026 leave windows.
- Coordinating China and Japan in 2026: where the calendars meet and where they miss — China and Japan build their holiday years from opposite legal starting points. Where 2026 overlaps, where it does not, and how to schedule around both.
- Building a coverage calendar for a team spread across Asia, Europe and the US — A practical method for turning thirteen national holiday lists into one coverage calendar, with the 2026 collision weeks you need to plan around now.
- Lunar New Year 2026 across eight territories: one date, eight shutdowns — Lunar New Year’s Day is Tuesday 17 February 2026. Mainland China stays out through the 23rd; Hong Kong and Macau take three days; Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam and Singapore each close differently.
- US federal holidays in 2026: what actually closes, and what only slows down — OPM’s list binds federal agencies, not private firms. How to schedule around Presidents’ Day, Juneteenth, Independence Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas when half the team is in Asia.
- Southeast Asia in 2026: Songkran, Tết, Nyepi and Lebaran hit different nodes — Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines do not share a holiday. Plan freight against the plant and the port, not against the word “SEA”.
- Substitute, observed and bridge days: five countries, five different machines — Japan rolls a Sunday holiday forward, the US observes it, Korea uses substitute public holidays, the UK moves Boxing Day, China swaps weekends. Using one rule on all five calendars will be wrong.
- How we compile 2026 dates: sources, what we refuse to guess, and how to send a correction — The editorial method behind the thirteen calendars: which official notices we read, which moving dates stay unmarked until confirmed, and what this site is not.
- Best and worst weeks for business travel in Asia in 2026 — Week-by-week collision windows across China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, the US and the UK — with booking advice that uses real 2026 dates.