Ghana public holidays 2027, and what they do to payroll and leave.
The government has not yet gazetted next year's dates. The table below is built from the Public Holidays and Commemorative Days Act as amended, with every movable and provisional date marked so you know exactly what still needs confirming before you plan a year around it.
The 2027 calendar
Fourteen statutory holidays under the amended Act. The Eid dates and Shaqq Day are projections until the Interior Minister confirms them nearer the time, and midweek holidays may be moved by declaration.
| Date | Day | Holiday |
|---|---|---|
| 1 January | Friday | New Year's Day |
| 7 January | Thursday | Constitution Day — OBSERVED DATE MAY SHIFT. 7 January is the statutory date. The 2025 amendment lets the President move a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday holiday to the preceding Monday or following Friday, by Executive Instrument. In 2026 the President moved Constitution Day (a Wednesday) to Friday 9 January, so Friday 8 January is the likelier outcome, but no 2027 declaration exists yet. |
| 6 March | Saturday | Independence Day — falls on a Saturday. The amended Act lets the President declare the following Monday, 8 March, by Executive Instrument; that is a declaration, not automatic |
| 9 March | Tuesday | Eid-ul-Fitr — PROJECTED. Lunar-calendar projections give Tuesday 9 March 2027. The date depends on sighting of the moon and is confirmed by the Interior Minister a few days beforehand (for 2026 the announcement came on 13 March for 20 March), so it may move by a day. |
| 10 March | Wednesday | Shaqq Day — PROJECTED. Introduced by the 2025 amendment and observed the day after Eid-ul-Fitr, so it moves with that date. In 2026 it fell on a Saturday and the President declared the Monday after as an additional holiday. |
| 26 March | Friday | Good Friday |
| 29 March | Monday | Easter Monday |
| 1 May | Saturday | May Day (Labour Day) — falls on a Saturday. The amended Act lets the President declare the following Monday, 3 May, by Executive Instrument; that is a declaration, not automatic |
| 16–17 May | Sun–Mon | Eid-ul-Adha — PROJECTED. Lunar-calendar projections give Sunday 16 May 2027, with Monday 17 May possible depending on the Dhul Hijjah crescent sighting. The date is confirmed by the Interior Minister nearer the time, and a Sunday date may be followed by a declared Monday holiday. |
| 1 July | Thursday | Republic Day — OBSERVED DATE MAY SHIFT. Restored as a statutory holiday by the 2025 amendment; 1 July is the statutory date. In 2026 the President moved it from a Wednesday to Friday 3 July, so Friday 2 July is the likelier outcome for 2027 (Monday 28 June is also permitted), but no 2027 declaration exists yet. |
| 21 September | Tuesday | Founders' Day — OBSERVED DATE MAY SHIFT. Formerly marked in some calendars as Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Day; the 2025 amendment fixes this date as Founders' Day and repeals the separate 4 August holiday. Falls on a Tuesday in 2027, so the President may move it to Monday 20 September or Friday 24 September. In 2026 the government moved midweek holidays to Friday, so Friday 24 September is the likelier outcome, but no 2027 declaration exists yet. |
| 3 December | Friday | Farmers' Day — the first Friday in December |
| 25 December | Saturday | Christmas Day — falls on a Saturday. Reports on the amendment say its shifting flexibility does not apply to Christmas or the Eids, so we cannot say Monday 27 December will be declared. Confirm against the Ministry of the Interior's 2027 notice. |
| 26 December | Sunday | Boxing Day — OBSERVED DATE TO CONFIRM. Falls on a Sunday. We found no source stating whether or how a Sunday Boxing Day is moved, or how it interacts with Christmas Day falling on the Saturday before. Confirm against the Ministry of the Interior's 2027 notice. |
These dates are drawn from the Public Holidays and Commemorative Days Act, 2001 (Act 601), as amended by the Public Holidays and Commemorative Days (Amendment) Act, 2025, and from the Ministry of the Interior's published statutory holiday list for 2026 as a pattern for how the Act is applied. Unlike the 2026 page, they are not read from a live Factura calendar, because the government has not yet gazetted next year's exact dates. Treat the fixed dates as reliable and the highlighted rows as provisional until the Ministry of the Interior's own 2027 notice is out.
The 2025 amendment also lets the President move any holiday landing on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday to the nearest Friday or Monday, at his discretion, to extend the weekend. Where that could apply below, we say so and note the 2026 precedent, but a discretionary call is not made until the Interior Ministry declares it. Weekend holidays work the same way: the President may declare the following Monday, and did so for Shaqq Day in 2026.
What a holiday does to payroll and leave
Less than people expect on the payroll side, and more than people expect on the leave side.
- Leave applications can skip public holidays.
- A holiday inside a leave range need not be counted against the employee's balance. In Factura this is a setting on the absence code, so annual leave can exclude public holidays while another category counts every calendar day.
- Half days are handled at the boundary.
- Where a leave request starts or ends on a half day, the day count checks whether that day is a holiday before deciding whether half a day comes off the balance.
- Pay for work on a public holiday follows your policy.
- The engine does not impose a holiday rate. If you pay a premium for holiday working, it is set up as a pay component with your own rule and computed in the run like any other earning.
- Monthly pay is unaffected by the count of holidays.
- A month with three public holidays pays the same basic as a month with none. Holidays reach payroll through attendance, overtime and leave, not through the salary itself.
Holiday calendars in Factura HRMS
One list is rarely enough. A head office, a factory and a site on a different shift pattern do not close on the same days.
- Calendars are named, and there can be severalEach holds its own list of dates, so a location or a group of employees can have its own set of closures.
- Each employee is assigned oneThe employee's calendar is what leave and attendance read, so the same leave request costs different balances for people on different calendars.
- Dates are entered with a start and an endA single day or a multi-day closure are the same thing to the system.
- Load next year before you need itThe 2026 dates sit in a live calendar already; the 2027 list above is waiting on the government's own notice. Once the provisional dates are confirmed, add them before employees start applying for December leave against January dates.
Leave, attendance and the holiday calendar are part of the same system as payroll, so a holiday you enter once is the same holiday the leave balance and the pay run see. If that is the part you want to look at, the Factura HRMS page walks through leave, attendance and a full pay run end to end. For the dates as they stood the year before, see Ghana public holidays 2026.
See a real pay run, end to end
Thirty minutes. We walk a full month — prepare, review, close, and produce the statutory files — and you can stop us anywhere.