Cyprus observes more public holidays than most of Europe — and the dates move every year. Because the island follows the Greek Orthodox calendar, Easter, Green Monday and Kataklysmos shift by weeks from one year to the next. That is why a completion date which looked perfectly safe in January can quietly land on a day when the Land Registry, your bank and your lawyer’s office are all shut.
This guide gives you the full list of public holidays in Cyprus for 2026 and 2027, confirmed against the Central Bank of Cyprus bank holiday schedule, plus the part most calendars leave out: what actually closes, what stays open, and how the holiday calendar affects property viewings, title transfers and mortgage drawdowns.
If you are buying, selling or relocating, treat this page as a planning tool rather than a list of dates. The dates are the easy part.
There are 16 public holidays in the Cyprus calendar in 2026. Four of them are tied to Orthodox Easter, which falls on Sunday 12 April 2026 — a week later than Western Easter that year.
| Date | Day | Holiday |
|---|---|---|
| 1 January | Thursday | New Year’s Day |
| 6 January | Tuesday | Epiphany (Theophania) |
| 23 February | Monday | Green Monday (Kathara Deftera) |
| 25 March | Wednesday | Greek Independence Day / Annunciation |
| 1 April | Wednesday | Cyprus National Day (EOKA Day) |
| 10 April | Friday | Orthodox Good Friday |
| 12 April | Sunday | Orthodox Easter Sunday |
| 13 April | Monday | Orthodox Easter Monday |
| 14 April | Tuesday | Orthodox Easter Tuesday |
| 1 May | Friday | Labour Day |
| 1 June | Monday | Kataklysmos / Pentecost (Holy Spirit Day) |
| 15 August | Saturday | Assumption of the Virgin Mary |
| 1 October | Thursday | Cyprus Independence Day |
| 28 October | Wednesday | Ohi Day (Greek National Day) |
| 25 December | Friday | Christmas Day |
| 26 December | Saturday | Boxing Day (Second Day of Christmas) |
Two things stand out in 2026. Assumption Day on 15 August and Boxing Day on 26 December both fall on a Saturday, which the Central Bank of Cyprus flags explicitly in its 2026 schedule — there is no substitute weekday off, so those two are effectively lost for anyone working Monday to Friday. And the April cluster is unusually dense: Cyprus National Day on 1 April is followed nine days later by a four-day Easter run from Good Friday through to Easter Tuesday.
Orthodox Easter jumps to Sunday 2 May 2027, three weeks later than in 2026. That single shift drags Green Monday from February into March and pushes Kataklysmos into late June.
| Date | Day | Holiday |
|---|---|---|
| 1 January | Friday | New Year’s Day |
| 6 January | Wednesday | Epiphany (Theophania) |
| 15 March | Monday | Green Monday (Kathara Deftera) |
| 25 March | Thursday | Greek Independence Day / Annunciation |
| 1 April | Thursday | Cyprus National Day (EOKA Day) |
| 30 April | Friday | Orthodox Good Friday |
| 1 May | Saturday | Labour Day |
| 2 May | Sunday | Orthodox Easter Sunday |
| 3 May | Monday | Orthodox Easter Monday |
| 4 May | Tuesday | Orthodox Easter Tuesday (banks) |
| 21 June | Monday | Kataklysmos / Pentecost (Holy Spirit Day) |
| 15 August | Sunday | Assumption of the Virgin Mary |
| 1 October | Friday | Cyprus Independence Day |
| 28 October | Thursday | Ohi Day (Greek National Day) |
| 25 December | Saturday | Christmas Day |
| 26 December | Sunday | Boxing Day (Second Day of Christmas) |
2027 is a poor year for anyone hoping to string holidays into long weekends: Labour Day, Assumption, Christmas Day and Boxing Day all fall on a weekend. On the other hand, the 30 April to 4 May window produces a genuinely long shutdown, with Labour Day, the Easter weekend and Easter Tuesday running almost back to back.
If you are working to a fixed completion deadline in either year, count backwards from these tables before you agree a date — not forwards from a signing date.
Cyprus public holidays split cleanly into two groups, and understanding the split is what stops you being caught out.
Fixed-date holidays land on the same calendar day every year: 1 January, 6 January, 25 March, 1 April, 1 May, 15 August, 1 October, 28 October, 25 December and 26 December. Only the weekday changes.
Movable holidays are all calculated from Orthodox Easter, which is set using the Julian calendar computus rather than the Gregorian calendar most of Europe uses. That is why Orthodox Easter can fall up to five weeks after Western Easter. Once the Easter date is fixed, the rest follow mechanically:
The practical consequence: a Cyprus holiday calendar you printed last year is not reusable. In 2026 Green Monday is 23 February; in 2027 it is 15 March; in 2028 it moves again to 28 February. Anyone scheduling a viewing trip, a construction milestone or a signing appointment more than a few months out should verify against the current year’s schedule rather than working from memory.
This is where generic holiday calendars stop being useful. In Cyprus, “public holiday” does not mean the whole island shuts — it means different sectors close to different degrees.
Banks close on every holiday listed above, plus every Sunday and every Saturday for bank transactions. The Central Bank of Cyprus publishes the definitive annual schedule and the commercial banks follow it. Note that Easter Tuesday is a bank holiday even though many private businesses reopen that day — a detail that regularly catches out buyers expecting funds to clear.
If your purchase involves a mortgage drawdown or an international transfer, a bank holiday is not a one-day delay. Value dates, correspondent banking and the wider European payments calendar mean a payment initiated the day before a four-day Easter break can realistically take a full week to land. Our Cyprus mortgage guide covers drawdown timing in more detail, and if you are still setting things up, start with opening a bank account in Cyprus.
All government departments close on public holidays, including the District Land Offices of the Department of Lands and Surveys. Public-sector counter hours are already short — typically from 08:00 until the early afternoon for public-facing services — so a holiday week can easily leave you with only two or three usable counter mornings.
This matters more than people expect. Title deed transfers, searches and the deposit of sale contracts all happen at a District Land Office in person. If you are working through the process for the first time, our Cyprus Land Registry guide explains the departments and services involved, and the title deeds guide covers what actually gets registered and when.
Law firms generally observe the full public holiday list, and many close for an extended period between Christmas and Epiphany, and again around Easter. Estate agencies are more flexible — in the coastal districts many will still show properties on a holiday, particularly to overseas buyers on a short viewing trip. It is worth asking rather than assuming; see our guide to working with real estate agents in Cyprus.
Large supermarkets in Limassol, Nicosia, Larnaca and Paphos usually open on most public holidays, though often on reduced hours. Christmas Day, Easter Sunday and 1 January are the genuine exceptions, when almost everything closes. Restaurants in tourist areas do the opposite of everyone else — Green Monday and Kataklysmos are among their busiest days of the year.
There is no blanket statutory obligation in Cyprus requiring private-sector employers to grant every public holiday as paid leave. Entitlement flows from the individual employment contract or the applicable collective agreement, and most employers do grant a substantial number of them. Public-sector employees receive the full list.
If you are moving to the island for work, check which holidays your contract actually covers — it is a common gap in offer letters. Our working in Cyprus guide covers contracts, permits and payroll, and the social insurance guide explains what comes out of your salary each month.
Four periods do most of the damage to property timelines. Plan around these and the rest of the year largely looks after itself.
Orthodox Easter is the single biggest interruption in the Cyprus calendar. Good Friday, Easter Monday and Easter Tuesday are all public holidays, Easter Sunday is the most important day in the religious year, and the surrounding Holy Week sees widely reduced hours. In practice, expect a working week that shrinks to one or two usable days, with construction sites, government offices and professional services all winding down together.
For buyers, the effect compounds: a transfer appointment missed in Easter week usually slips by a fortnight rather than a few days, because the following week is spent clearing the backlog. In 2026 that window runs roughly 6 to 17 April; in 2027 it is 26 April to 7 May, made worse by Labour Day falling inside it.
August is not officially a shutdown, but it functions as one. Assumption Day on 15 August sits in the middle of the island’s hottest, quietest month, when many Cypriot businesses run skeleton staffing and a large share of the professional workforce takes annual leave. Construction slows in the heat, and developer sales offices in coastal areas pivot towards walk-in tourist traffic.
The flip side is that August is an excellent month to look. Rental stock is visible, coastal districts are at their busiest so you can judge noise and traffic honestly, and agents in Limassol, Larnaca and Paphos generally have time for viewings even when the paperwork side of the market is slow. Just do not expect to complete anything in August.
Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year’s Day and Epiphany span a twelve-day window with only a handful of working days in between. Many law firms and developer offices effectively close from around 24 December to 7 January. If you want a transaction registered before year end — which can matter for tax-year purposes — the practical cut-off is mid-December, not 31 December.
Green Monday marks the start of Orthodox Lent and is a genuine national day out. Families head to the countryside and the coast for picnics of lagana bread, olives, seafood and vegetables, and kite-flying is the tradition of the day. Roads out of the cities are heavy from mid-morning onwards.
Kataklysmos, the Festival of the Flood, falls 50 days after Easter and is distinctively Cypriot rather than simply Greek Orthodox. Coastal municipalities — Larnaca’s Finikoudes seafront and the Limassol waterfront among them — host multi-day festivals with swimming competitions, folk dancing, tsiattista poetic duelling contests and, inevitably, a great deal of water-throwing. Larnaca has run an institutionalised version of the festival since 1918.
Kataklysmos on the Larnaca seafront — traditional crafts, music and dancing. Worth seeing once, and worth avoiding if you were hoping to view a coastal property that weekend.
Both are one-day public holidays, but both create weekend-scale traffic and make coastal viewing appointments impractical. They are also, for what it is worth, two of the best days in the year to understand what living in a Cyprus coastal town actually feels like — useful context if you are weighing Limassol against Larnaca.
A workable approach for buyers and sellers:
If you are buying from overseas, sequence matters more than speed. Our guide to buying property in Cyprus as a foreigner sets out the full order of operations, and the property transfer fees guide covers what is payable at the Land Registry when the appointment finally comes around.
Use the closed days productively. Run an instant property report on anything you shortlist, so the analysis is already done by the time offices reopen and you are ready to move on a decision rather than starting from scratch.
Relocating rather than investing? The holiday calendar interacts with school terms, residency appointments and rental start dates — the relocating to Cyprus guide and the schools in Cyprus guide are the right starting points, and cost of living in Cyprus will tell you what a month on the island actually costs. If you are renting first, our property to rent guide covers lease timing.
Cyprus observes 15 to 16 public holidays a year, depending on how Orthodox Easter falls and whether particular dates land on a weekend. That places Cyprus at the top end of the European range. The Central Bank of Cyprus schedule for 2026 lists 13 weekday bank holidays plus every Sunday and every Saturday for bank transactions, and separately notes that Assumption Day and Boxing Day fall on Saturdays that year.
The Greek Orthodox Church calculates Easter using the Julian calendar computus, while most Western churches use the Gregorian. The two can coincide, but Orthodox Easter is more often one to five weeks later. In 2026 it falls on 12 April and in 2027 on 2 May.
Generally no. Cyprus does not operate a standard substitute-day system for public holidays that land on a Saturday or Sunday. This is why 2027 is a relatively poor year — Labour Day, Assumption, Christmas Day and Boxing Day all fall on weekend days.
No. All District Land Offices of the Department of Lands and Surveys close on public holidays, as do all other government departments. Counter hours on normal working days are also shorter than standard office hours, typically ending in the early afternoon, so plan Land Registry visits for the morning.
Most large supermarkets and tourist-area businesses open on the majority of public holidays, often on reduced hours. Christmas Day, Easter Sunday and New Year’s Day are the main exceptions, when almost everything closes. Restaurants and beach venues are typically at their busiest on Green Monday and Kataklysmos.
It depends on your contract. There is no general statutory requirement for private-sector employers to grant every public holiday as paid leave — entitlement flows from the individual employment agreement or the applicable collective agreement, and most employers grant a significant number of them. Public-sector employees receive the full list.
Orthodox Easter week and the period from 24 December to 7 January. Both combine several consecutive public holidays with widespread voluntary closures across banks, law firms and government offices, and both generate a backlog that delays the following week as well.
The public holidays in Cyprus are not just a cultural curiosity — for anyone transacting on the island they are a scheduling constraint with real financial consequences. Two clusters, Orthodox Easter and the Christmas-to-Epiphany window, account for most of the disruption, and both move or compress depending on the year. August behaves like an unofficial third.
Get the dates into your calendar early, build buffer around anything involving a bank or the Land Registry, and use the quiet weeks for the research that does not need an open counter. Do that and the Cyprus holiday calendar stops being a source of missed deadlines and becomes what it should be: one of the better reasons to live here.
Ready to start looking? Browse verified listings for apartments across Cyprus and every district on index.cy, or run an instant property report on a property you are considering — the analysis runs whether or not the Land Registry happens to be open.
This guide is general information only and is not legal, tax or financial advice. Public holiday dates are confirmed against the Central Bank of Cyprus 2026 bank holiday schedule and standard Orthodox calendar calculations, but individual employer, bank and government office arrangements vary. Always confirm specific dates and opening hours directly with the office or business concerned before relying on them for a deadline.
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