The Global Festival Calendar Every Distributed Team Should Plan For

A foreign manager once told us that her single biggest mistake in three years of running an India-Vietnam-Bangladesh engineering team was scheduling a global product launch on the Monday after Diwali. Half the team was still on planes. A quarter were in family ceremonies. The release slipped by ten days. She did not make that mistake again.

This piece is, partly, so that you do not make it once.

What follows is a short, practical reference for the festivals that most affect cross-border team availability in the markets we work in. It is not exhaustive — Nepal alone has around 35 gazetted public holidays — but it covers the periods that most consistently disrupt deliveries for foreign employers who have not built them into the operating calendar.

Bangladesh

• Eid al-Fitr (date varies; lunar calendar). Three official days, but workers typically take 5-7 days. Major rural exodus from Dhaka. Production effectively pauses across the country. Plan resource coverage in advance.
• Eid al-Adha (date varies; ~2 months after Eid al-Fitr). Three official days, similar dynamics to Eid al-Fitr.
• Festival bonus. One month's basic salary, mandatory under Bangladesh Labour Act. In practice, two festival bonuses per year (one before each Eid) is standard. Budget this explicitly; it is not optional.
• Pohela Boishakh (14 April). Bangla New Year. National public holiday. Strong cultural significance — secular and universal across the population.
• Victory Day (16 December). Commemorates the end of the 1971 Liberation War. National public holiday with significant cultural weight.

Practical note: Bangladesh's working week is Sunday to Thursday in most sectors, with Friday-Saturday as the weekend. Government offices and many private firms now use Saturday as a working day. Confirm the working pattern of your specific employees.

Nepal

• Dashain (October, Ashwin/Kartik BS). Ten to fifteen days of celebration. The single most important Hindu festival in Nepal. Offices close 5-10 working days. Plan for significantly reduced productivity in the 2-3 weeks surrounding Dashain.
• Tihar / Deepawali (October-November, following Dashain). Five-day festival of lights. Offices typically close 3-5 days. Many employees request leave for the full period.
• Dashain-Tihar combined. Treat this October-November window as equivalent to a Western Christmas-New Year shutdown. This is the most disruptive period of the year for Nepali workforce availability.
• Holi (March). One public holiday; expect informal absences the following day in Kathmandu.
• Buddha Jayanti (May). One public holiday; particularly significant for Buddhist communities (Sherpa, Tamang, Newar Buddhist, Gurung).

Practical note: Nepal's working week is Sunday to Friday. Saturday is the official weekly holiday. The time zone is UTC+5:45.

Vietnam

• Tết (Lunar New Year, late January or early February). Officially around five days, practically one to two weeks for many workers. Major migration to ancestral home regions. The 13th-month salary paid before Tết is a near-universal expectation, not a bonus. Budget for it explicitly.
• Hùng Kings' Festival (10th day of 3rd lunar month). National holiday commemorating the legendary founders of Vietnam.
• Reunification Day (30 April) + Labour Day (1 May). Often combined into an extended public holiday.
• National Day (2 September). Commemorates Vietnam's 1945 declaration of independence.

Vietnam observes only about 11 gazetted public holidays per year — one of the lowest counts in Southeast Asia. But Tết is structurally far longer than its official allocation. Plan for it accordingly.

India

India has only three gazetted national public holidays — Republic Day (26 January), Independence Day (15 August), and Gandhi Jayanti (2 October). Everything else is regional. The festivals that most affect distributed team availability:

• Diwali (October-November). The festival of lights. Major across North, West, and parts of South India. Effectively shuts down major operations for several days. The most consistent culprit for "we forgot to plan around it" in our experience.
• Holi (March). Festival of colours. Major across the North.
• Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. Significant for Muslim employees nationwide.
• Durga Puja (September-October). Effectively closes Bengal (West Bengal, parts of Odisha, Assam) for a week.
• Onam (August-September). The defining festival of Kerala. Significant for any Kerala-based employee.
• Pongal (mid-January). Major across Tamil Nadu.
• Ganesh Chaturthi (August-September). Major across Maharashtra and parts of Karnataka.
• Christmas (25 December). Significant in Kerala, Goa, and Northeast India.

Practical note: Indian regional variance matters. A Bengali employee will care about Durga Puja in ways a Tamil employee may not. A Malayali employee will care about Onam in ways a Punjabi employee may not. Ask each team member, build a team-specific calendar.

Cyprus

• Orthodox Easter (date varies; typically late April or early May). The most significant holiday of the year — not Christmas. Sending Easter wishes (Καλή Ανάσταση / Χριστός Ανέστη) is culturally appreciated.
• Cypriot Independence Day (1 October).
• Greek Independence Day (25 March). Reflects the deep cultural ties to Greece.
• Christmas (25 December) and New Year, observed across the Orthodox calendar.

Cyprus observes 17 gazetted public holidays — one of the highest counts in the EU.

Germany

• Christmas shutdown (23 December - 3 January). Treat as a genuine organisational close. Scheduling meetings or deadlines in this period creates lasting resentment with German colleagues.
• Easter Monday and Good Friday. Federal holidays.
• Tag der Deutschen Einheit (3 October). German Unity Day.
• State-specific holidays. Critically, several public holidays vary by Bundesland. Bavaria observes Mariä Himmelfahrt (15 August); most of Germany does not. North Rhine-Westphalia observes Allerheiligen (1 November); Berlin does not. Track holidays by employee location, not by company location.

Three principles for actually using this

• Build a shared team calendar at the start of each year. Annotate it by employee, with each person's home country and any culturally significant dates flagged. Make it visible to the whole team.
• Avoid scheduling launches, all-hands, and critical deadlines on or immediately after major festivals. The Monday after Diwali. The first week after Tết. The day after Eid. The week after Dashain. These are not arbitrary preferences; they are operational realities.
• Recognise the festival when it happens. A two-line acknowledgement in the team channel — "Happy Diwali to our team in India," "Eid Mubarak" — costs nothing and signals significant inclusion. Conversely, silence around major festivals reads, accurately, as not caring.

A team that builds its calendar this way runs differently. Deliveries do not slip mysteriously. Retention conversations get easier. The workforce notices, in our experience, who treats their festivals as real and who treats them as inconvenience.

The choice is, ultimately, that simple.