Working With Your India Team: Holidays, Time Zones, and Festivals
By Ravi Kiran, Co-founder, Saileor.
Last updated: 31 July 2026. Holiday details reflect India’s 2026 calendar. State holidays vary, so confirm the specific state when you set a leave policy.
The rules of hiring in India get all the attention. But the part that decides whether your team actually thrives is quieter. It is the daily rhythm: the hours you share, the days they rest, and the festivals that shape their year.
Get this right and distance stops being a problem. It becomes an advantage. Here is how the calendar and the clock really work with an India team, and how to turn both into something that helps you.
The time gap, and why it is a gift
India runs on a single time zone, IST, across the whole country. That alone is a relief. You never juggle three internal zones like you might across the United States.
Yes, India is hours ahead of the Americas and Europe. But flip that around. When your day ends, theirs is in full swing. Work handed off in your evening can be moving again by your morning. Teams that plan around this get something close to a round-the-clock cycle, without asking anyone to work strange hours.
The trick is to find the overlap and protect it. Most global teams working with India keep a shared window of a few hours for live calls and quick decisions, then let the rest of the day run on its own. Use that overlap for the things that need real-time talk. Let everything else happen in writing.
Write more than you would at home. Clear notes, clear tasks, clear decisions. When your team is hours ahead, good writing is what keeps everyone moving while you sleep.
Three national holidays, and many more
India has exactly three holidays that the whole country shares, no matter the state or religion:
Holiday | Date in 2026 | What it marks |
Republic Day | 26 January | The day India’s constitution began |
Independence Day | 15 August | Freedom from British rule |
Gandhi Jayanti | 2 October | Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday |
Beyond those three, the picture opens up. The central government lists around 17 main holidays for the year, and states add their own on top. So a team in Mumbai and a team in Chennai may not rest on exactly the same days. This is normal. It is not disorder. It is a large country holding many cultures at once.
The festivals that shape the year
To work well with an India team, it helps to know the big moments, the way you would know Thanksgiving or Christmas back home. The difference is that India does not have one big holiday. It has one long season.
It runs from roughly mid-September to mid-November, and it arrives in three waves: Ganesh Chaturthi, then Dussehra, then Deepavali. Every wave is celebrated somewhere in the country. No two regions celebrate it the same way, and in most states one wave matters far more than the other two. That is the part foreign employers miss. They see one Indian festival calendar. Your team is living in four or five of them.
The wave | Dates in 2026 | Where it hits hardest |
Ganesh Chaturthi | 14 to 25 September | Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh |
Navratri, Durga Puja, Dussehra | 11 to 20 October | Gujarat, West Bengal, Odisha, Assam, the whole North, Karnataka |
Deepavali, or Diwali | 6 to 10 November | Almost everywhere, but not all on the same day |
Chhath Puja | 13 to 16 November | Bihar, Jharkhand, eastern Uttar Pradesh |
These dates follow the lunar calendar, so they move every year. The 2026 peak days are 14 September, 20 October and 8 November.
Wave one: Ganesh Chaturthi, 14 to 25 September 2026
Clay idols of Ganesha are installed in homes and in street pandals on the first day, worshipped for up to ten days, then carried to water and immersed. The immersion processions are enormous. In Mumbai and Pune they close roads for hours, and the final day, Anant Chaturdashi on 25 September, is close to a citywide stop.
In Maharashtra and Goa this is the festival of the year, bigger than Diwali for many families. In Hyderabad, Bengaluru and coastal Andhra it is public and loud too, with the Khairatabad idol in Hyderabad drawing crowds for days. In Tamil Nadu and Kerala the same day is quiet, a home puja and a working afternoon. Across most of the North and East it barely registers at all.
So if your team sits in Mumbai, Pune or Hyderabad, treat the second half of September as a soft fortnight. If it sits in Delhi or Kolkata, September is a normal month.
Wave two: Navratri, Durga Puja and Dussehra, 11 to 20 October 2026
This is the one that confuses global employers most, because the calendar entry looks identical everywhere and the experience is not. Nine nights, one tenth day. Four completely different festivals sharing the same dates.
Region | What these ten days are | What it means for work |
Gujarat | Navratri: nine nights of Garba and Dandiya | People work, then dance until two in the morning. Expect late starts and low energy, not absences. |
West Bengal, Odisha, Assam, Tripura, Jharkhand | Durga Puja | The state effectively stops. Roughly 17 to 20 October is a full shutdown, not a single holiday. Plan around a week. |
Delhi, UP, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, MP, Bihar | Navratri fasting, Ramlila, Ravan Dahan | Many fast for nine days, avoiding grain, onion and garlic. Then one big holiday on Dussehra, 20 October. |
Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra, Telangana, Kerala | Golu, Ayudha Puja, Vidyarambham | Tools and machines are honoured, laptops included. Holidays cluster on 19 and 20 October. Mysuru Dasara runs the full ten days. |
The tenth day, Vijayadashami on 20 October, is the same day everywhere and means the same thing: good wins. It is also the most auspicious day of the year to start something new. A lot of Indian employees will happily sign, join or launch on that date.
Wave three: Deepavali, 6 to 10 November 2026
Diwali is not one day. It is five: Dhanteras on 6 November, Naraka Chaturdashi on 7 November, Lakshmi Puja on 8 November, Govardhan Puja on 9 November, and Bhai Dooj on 10 November. The 8 November night, the darkest of the lunar month, is the main one for most of the country.
Here is the trap. Much of South India celebrates Deepavali on 7 November, a day before the North. In Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and much of Karnataka the festival is Naraka Chaturdashi, marked with an oil bath before sunrise and finished by lunchtime. Send one company-wide greeting on 8 November and half your Chennai team reads it a day late.
Region or community | How Deepavali actually looks |
North and West India | Five full days. Lamps, cleaning, gifting, Lakshmi Puja on the night of 8 November. The longest and loudest version. |
Gujarat | 9 November is Bestu Varas, the Gujarati New Year. New account books are opened. Many Gujarati-run businesses close for a full week. |
Tamil Nadu, Andhra, Telangana, Karnataka | Main day is 7 November. Oil bath before dawn, new clothes, sweets, over by midday. |
West Bengal and Odisha | The same new-moon night is Kali Puja, not Lakshmi Puja. Different goddess, different mood, coming straight off Durga Puja. |
Punjab and Sikh colleagues | The same day is Bandi Chhor Divas, marking Guru Hargobind’s release from prison. |
Kerala | Deepavali is minor here. Kerala’s real festival is Onam, which fell on 26 August in 2026. |
Jain colleagues | Diwali marks Mahavira attaining nirvana, and the Jain new year begins the next day. |
The wave nobody warns you about: Chhath Puja, 13 to 16 November 2026
For Bihar, Jharkhand and eastern Uttar Pradesh, Chhath is bigger than Diwali. Four days, a thirty-six hour fast without food or water, and offerings made standing waist-deep in a river to the setting sun and again to the rising sun. There are no priests and no idols in it, just water and sunlight.
It also triggers one of the largest annual migrations on earth. Trains out of Delhi and Mumbai towards Patna sell out months in advance. If anyone on your team is from these states, their season does not end on 8 November. It ends around 16 November, and they will want leave on both sides of it.
PLANNING THE SEASON IN ONE PARAGRAPH
Treat mid-September to mid-November as a low-throughput window. Do not put a launch, a migration or a hard deadline through it.
Ask each person which two or three days actually matter to them, then approve that leave by August, because flights and trains sell out. Everything else can run normally.
The rest of the year has its own moments. Holi brings colour in spring. Pongal, Makar Sankranti, Lohri and Magh Bihu mark the January harvest under four different names in four different states. Onam fills Kerala in late August. Eid, Christmas, Good Friday, Guru Nanak Jayanti and Mahavir Jayanti sit on the national list too, because India’s calendar was never built around one faith.
You do not need to memorise all of this. You just need to respect it, and to get the day right. A founder who says “enjoy Deepavali with your family” on the day their colleague actually celebrates it earns more goodwill than a year of engagement surveys.
Distance is not the enemy of a great team. Indifference is. Learn the days that matter to your people, and the miles stop mattering.
How many holidays should you give?
A fair and common approach is to offer somewhere around 12 to 15 public holidays a year, plus paid leave on top. Because state holidays differ, many companies give a fixed set of national holidays and then let each person choose a few optional ones that fit their own region and faith. It is flexible, it is fair, and it respects how varied India really is.
You do not have to design this alone. Setting a leave policy that matches local norms is part of what an Employer of Record handles for you.
THE HUMAN SIDE IN ONE LINE
Share a few live hours each day, write things down clearly, respect the big festivals, and give fair holidays. Do that, and an India team feels close no matter the distance.
Small things that build real trust
The habits that make a remote team feel like a team are simple and cheap. Wish people well on their festivals. Learn how names are said. Keep one reliable overlap window so no one feels cut off. Record the meetings they cannot join live. And judge the work by what gets done, not by when someone happened to be online.
None of this is in a labour code. All of it is what makes people stay.
Where Saileor helps
We set up leave and holiday policies that fit India and feel fair to your team, so you do not have to guess the norms. The compliance, the payroll, and the local know-how sit with us. The relationship, the one that actually builds your company, stays with you. That is the split that works.
How many time zones does India have?
Just one, IST, across the whole country. You never have to juggle multiple internal zones the way you might elsewhere.
How many public holidays does India have?
There are three national holidays shared by everyone: Republic Day, Independence Day, and Gandhi Jayanti. Beyond those, the central list has around 17 main holidays, and states add their own, so most companies give roughly 10 to 12 in total plus paid leave.
When is India's festival season, and what should I plan around?
The whole stretch from mid-September to mid-November. It comes in three waves: Ganesh Chaturthi (14 to 25 September 2026), Navratri, Durga Puja and Dussehra (11 to 20 October 2026), and Deepavali (6 to 10 November 2026). Chhath Puja follows on 13 to 16 November for teams from Bihar, Jharkhand and eastern UP. Avoid launches and hard deadlines across that window, and note that much of South India celebrates Deepavali on 7 November, a day before the North.
How do I keep a remote India team feeling connected?
Protect a shared overlap window each day, write decisions down clearly, respect festivals, and judge work by output rather than online hours.
