Guide
When Indonesia stops working.
Indonesian national holidays and collective leave are fixed each year by a joint decree of three ministers, published late in the preceding year. The religious dates move against the Gregorian calendar, so a plan that worked last year lands somewhere different this year.
Why this page has no table of dates.
Because the dates for a year are not real until the decree exists. The Ministry of Religious Affairs, the Ministry of Manpower and the Ministry of Administrative Reform issue it together, and it sets both the public holidays and the collective leave days that turn a one-day holiday into a week.1
Every site that prints next year's Indonesian holidays in advance is publishing an estimate. The estimate is usually close and it is not what you should book a vessel against. Check the decree for the year you are planning, and if it is not out yet, plan for the pattern instead.
The five that move orders.
- Idul FitriLebaran, Eid al-Fitr
The one that matters most. It ends Ramadan, the government adds collective leave around it, and tens of millions of people travel home for it. Factories in Java run at reduced capacity through Ramadan, stop for the holiday, and take time afterwards to get their workforce back. Treat it as several weeks rather than as a few days.1
- Chinese New YearImlek
A public holiday in Indonesia and a much bigger event for the shipping that carries your container. Sailings tighten, rates move, and Chinese-owned businesses in the supply chain slow down. The effect on Indonesian production is modest and the effect on freight is not.1
- Idul AdhaEid al-Adha
Shorter than Idul Fitri and still a real interruption, with collective leave attached in most years. It falls roughly seventy days after Idul Fitri, so a plan that avoided one can walk into the other.1
- NyepiBalinese day of silence
Bali stops completely for a full day, including the airport and the port. If your goods are furniture, homeware or anything else made on Bali, nothing moves and nobody works, and the day before is spent preparing.1
- Independence Day17 Agustus
A single day in August, with the week around it given over to preparation and events in a great many workplaces. Less disruptive than the religious holidays and worth knowing about when a deadline lands on it.1
The eleven-day drift.
The Islamic calendar is lunar and runs about eleven days shorter than the Gregorian one, so Ramadan, Idul Fitri and Idul Adha arrive earlier each year. Over a decade they travel through every season. This is why a buyer who has imported from Indonesia for years still gets caught: the habit of ordering in a particular month stops working, quietly, one year at a time.
Nyepi and Independence Day do not drift. Chinese New Year moves within a window in late January and February.
Harvest is a separate calendar.
Agricultural products have their own timing and it has nothing to do with public holidays. Coffee, cocoa, spices and cashew each have a main crop and often a smaller second one, they differ by island, and they move with the rains rather than with a date. Buying immediately after a main harvest gets you fresher material and more of it to choose from.
We do not print harvest months here, for the same reason we do not print undecided holiday dates: they would be used to plan a container. Ask about the crop you want and we will tell you where it is in the season now.
Questions buyers ask.
How much time should I add around Idul Fitri?
More than the decree suggests. The published holiday and collective leave are a few days. The practical interruption runs from the last stretch of Ramadan, when output falls, through the travel home, to a return that is gradual rather than immediate. Buyers who plan for the decree alone are the ones surprised in the second week.
Does everything close, everywhere?
No, and that is worth knowing. Indonesia is not uniformly Muslim, and Bali in particular runs a different rhythm with its own holidays. A furniture order from Bali and a spice order from Sumatra do not have the same calendar, which occasionally makes one origin the sensible choice at a particular time of year.
Do ports and customs stop too?
They run reduced operations on national holidays and the backlog afterwards is real. A container that was ready before the holiday can still sit, because the queue in front of it grew while nobody was working. Building slack after a holiday matters as much as avoiding it.
When is the best time to place an order?
Far enough ahead that the holiday falls inside your buffer instead of inside your production window. For anything landing in the first half of a year, that usually means committing before Ramadan begins rather than during it, and for agricultural goods it also means asking where the crop is.
Planning a delivery date?
Tell us the product and when you need it landed. We will tell you straight away whether the calendar allows it.
Sources
- 1Joint ministerial decree on national holidays and collective leave, 2026. Kementerian Koordinator Bidang Pembangunan Manusia dan Kebudayaan, Republic of Indonesia. Checked 5 August 2026.