Overview
A remote employee in the Philippines works on a foreign calendar for hours and a Philippine calendar for holidays, and the second calendar is the one employers forget until the first December. The 2026 list is set: Proclamation No. 1006 declares ten regular holidays and eight special non-working days, plus one special working day, and two further regular holidays for Eid'l Fitr and Eid'l Adha were proclaimed separately once their lunar dates were fixed. That makes twenty-one days, and they are not spread evenly.
The distinction between the two categories is not ceremonial. A regular holiday is paid whether or not the person works, and paid double if they do. A special non-working day follows the opposite rule: unpaid if not worked, a 30 percent premium if worked. An employer that treats the two the same either overpays for eight days a year or underpays for twelve, and both errors surface as a payroll dispute rather than a calendar one.
What follows is the full 2026 list by category, the pay rule for each, the weeks where the days cluster, the choice every foreign employer makes about whose holidays the roster follows, and how a staffing provider that employs the person carries all of it.
The twelve regular holidays
| Date | Holiday |
|---|---|
| Thursday, 1 January | New Year's Day |
| Friday, 20 March | Eid'l Fitr (Proclamation No. 1189) |
| Thursday, 2 April | Maundy Thursday |
| Friday, 3 April | Good Friday |
| Thursday, 9 April | Araw ng Kagitingan (Day of Valor) |
| Friday, 1 May | Labor Day |
| Wednesday, 27 May | Eid'l Adha |
| Friday, 12 June | Independence Day |
| Monday, 31 August | National Heroes Day |
| Monday, 30 November | Bonifacio Day |
| Friday, 25 December | Christmas Day |
| Wednesday, 30 December | Rizal Day |
The two Islamic holidays are proclaimed a few weeks ahead each year rather than in the annual list, because their dates follow the lunar calendar. In 2026 Eid'l Fitr was declared on 13 March for 20 March, and Eid'l Adha for 27 May. A roster built in January should hold two floating regular holidays for them, one in spring and one in early summer.
The eight special non-working days
- Tuesday, 17 February: Chinese New Year
- Saturday, 4 April: Black Saturday
- Friday, 21 August: Ninoy Aquino Day
- Sunday, 1 November: All Saints' Day
- Monday, 2 November: All Souls' Day
- Tuesday, 8 December: Feast of the Immaculate Conception
- Thursday, 24 December: Christmas Eve
- Thursday, 31 December: Last Day of the Year
One more date belongs on the calendar without belonging to either list. Wednesday, 25 February, the fortieth anniversary of the EDSA People Power Revolution, is a special working day: offices and schools open as usual, and it carries no pay premium. It appears on many third-party holiday lists as if it were a day off. It is not.
Local governments also declare their own special non-working days for town fiestas and provincial anniversaries, announced through the year by separate proclamation. These bind employers in that locality only, which for a remote employee means the province they work from. They are worth asking about at hiring, since a fiesta in the employee's city is a day the employer will not see on any national list.
What each category pays
The rules below are the ones the Department of Labor and Employment restates in a labor advisory before each holiday. The 2026 advisories (Labor Advisory No. 9 for Eid'l Adha, No. 13 for the August holidays) carry the same figures.
On a regular holiday, an employee who does not work is paid 100 percent of the daily wage, on one condition: they reported for work, or were on paid leave, on the working day immediately before the holiday. An employee who works is paid 200 percent of the daily wage for the first eight hours, with overtime at the hourly rate times 200 percent times 130 percent. If the holiday also falls on the employee's rest day and they work anyway, the first eight hours pay 200 percent times 130 percent.
On a special non-working day, the principle is no work, no pay, unless a company policy, an established practice or a collective agreement provides otherwise. An employee who works is paid 130 percent of the basic wage for the first eight hours, and 150 percent if the day is also their rest day. Overtime on the day is the hourly rate times 130 percent times 130 percent.
For a monthly-paid remote employee the arithmetic is simpler than it looks, because the twelve regular holidays are already inside the monthly rate. The practical questions are only two: whether a worked regular holiday is being paid at double, and whether a worked special day is being paid at 130. Both are the employer's obligation under Philippine law when the employer is the legal employer, and the provider's when the provider is.
Where the days cluster
Spread across a year, twenty-one days sound manageable. On a roster they arrive in groups.
- Holy Week and the Day of Valor, 2 to 9 April. Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Black Saturday close a four-day weekend, and Araw ng Kagitingan lands the following Thursday. A team can be at half strength for most of two weeks.
- Undas, 1 and 2 November. All Saints' and All Souls' fall on a Sunday and a Monday in 2026, and most families travel to the provinces for them. Expect the Monday off and Friday requests around it.
- The Christmas run, 24 December to 1 January. Christmas Eve (special), Christmas Day (regular), Rizal Day (regular), the Last Day of the Year (special) and New Year's Day (regular) fall inside nine calendar days, with 8 December's Immaculate Conception just before. For a US client this is also their own quiet fortnight, which softens it; for an Australian client in its summer trading season it does not.
- Three long weekends by design. Eid'l Fitr, Labor Day and Independence Day all fall on Fridays; National Heroes Day and Bonifacio Day are Mondays. These are the easy ones to plan around, and the ones an employee will ask about first.
Whose holidays does the roster follow?
Every foreign employer of Philippine staff makes the same choice, whether or not they make it deliberately. The person's legal holidays are Philippine; the business they serve closes on American, Australian or Singaporean days that the Philippine calendar ignores.
The arrangement that works, and that most managed teams settle on, is to split the two questions. Pay follows the Philippine calendar: the employee takes the twelve regular holidays as paid days, and is paid the legal premium for any of the twenty-one they work. Coverage follows the client's calendar: the employee works Philippine special days if the client is open and takes the client's holidays as ordinary leave or as time in lieu. A US team therefore loses its Philippine colleague for Holy Week and gains them on Thanksgiving; an Australian team loses them for Undas and has them on Australia Day. The trade is roughly even over a year, and it is only a problem when nobody wrote it down.
The one rule not to bend is the regular holiday. Asking a Philippine employee to work Christmas Day for a client that is also closed, at single pay, because "it is just another Thursday" on the client's side, is the fastest way to lose a good hire and the clearest breach of the law.
How a staffing provider carries it
When a managed staffing provider is the legal employer, the holiday calendar is the provider's to run: the regular holidays are inside the monthly rate, the premiums for worked days are the provider's payroll obligation, and the client sees a flat invoice rather than twelve separate calculations. Flex, a managed provider in the Philippines, employs the professionals it places and handles that payroll and compliance directly; the hiring page sets out what the monthly rate covers. The coverage half of the arrangement above still belongs to the client and the employee to agree, ideally in the first week, with the client's own closure days written into the roster beside the Philippine ones.
Conclusion
The 2026 Philippine calendar for a remote team is twelve regular holidays, paid whether worked or not and doubled if worked; eight special non-working days, unpaid unless worked and then paid at 130 percent; one special working day that is not a day off; and whatever the employee's own province declares. The days cluster in Holy Week, at Undas and across Christmas, and the two Islamic holidays float until proclaimed.
The employer's job is not to memorise the list. It is to decide, in writing and before the first cluster arrives, that pay follows the Philippine calendar and coverage follows the client's, and to never treat a regular holiday as an ordinary shift.
