Bayram 2027 Dates in Turkey: Ramazan & Kurban, What Closes

Turkey's two biggest holidays are not on the Gregorian calendar, don't fall on the same dates twice, and between them account for the only weeks of the year when the whole country is trying to travel at once. Americans planning around Turkish dates routinely find the national holidays and miss these two entirely. Here are the dates, then what they do to a trip.

Bayram dates for 2027 and 2028

The dates come from the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), which publishes the calendar years ahead. The eve (arife) is a half-day public holiday from 1 p.m.; the full days follow it.

Two things to read off that table before anything else. Kurban Bayramı 2027 starts on a Saturday afternoon and runs to Wednesday night: banks and government offices are shut for four and a half consecutive days, and the roads, buses and domestic flights carry the whole country at once. Ramazan Bayramı 2027 sits Tuesday to Thursday, the shape that in recent years has more than once been stretched into a full week off by a government decision announced only weeks ahead.

What the dates mean for a trip

• Moving around. The eve afternoon and the first full day are when the country travels. Intercity buses and domestic flights sell out days ahead and the roads out of Istanbul jam, so either book your leg before the block begins or plan to stay put for its first two days. When a bus or train beats a flight in Turkey covers the ground options.
• Where it gets busy. Istanbul empties and the coast fills. Turkish families head for the Aegean and Mediterranean resorts and for their home towns, so a May Bayram on the coast is domestic high season layered on top of the foreign one. Cappadocia's hotels see the same wave.
• Cash. Bank counters close for the whole block; ATMs keep running and become your only source of lira, so top up before the eve and know what a Turkish withdrawal really costs.
• Sights. Museums and archaeological sites are not covered by the holiday law and most keep their usual hours; check the site's own page for the first day. The first morning is prayer time at every working mosque, so leave Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque for the afternoon. The Grand Bazaar closes on the first day of each religious Bayram.
• Before Ramazan Bayramı. The month leading into it is Ramadan, which closes almost nothing but changes the rhythm of the day: what changes for a visitor during Ramadan.

The two Bayrams

Ramazan Bayramı

The three-day festival that ends the fasting month — Eid al-Fitr elsewhere, and colloquially Şeker Bayramı, the "sugar holiday", for the sweets given to visiting children. It falls immediately after Ramadan, so it inherits Ramadan's movement through the calendar. The next one runs 9-11 March 2027, preceded by a half-day from 13:00 on 8 March.

Kurban Bayramı

The Feast of Sacrifice — Eid al-Adha — and the larger of the two, both in length and in how much the country moves. The next one runs 16-19 May 2027, preceded by a half-day from 13:00 on 15 May.

How long they officially last

This is set in law rather than by custom, and the structure is the same for both: a half-day first, then the full days. The arife — the eve — of each religious Bayram is a half-day public holiday beginning at 13:00, when official institutions and many workplaces close. Ramazan Bayramı then runs three full days; Kurban Bayramı runs four.

So the official block is three and a half days for the first and four and a half for the second, and the half-day is the part visitors miss. A bank open at 11am on the eve is closed at 2pm.

The gap between them

About two lunar months separate the two Bayrams; in 2027 and 2028 the interval works out around 68 days. Because both are pinned to the lunar calendar, the gap is roughly fixed while the pair as a whole drifts earlier each year.

The drift, and what it collides with

Both Bayrams move backwards through the Gregorian year at the same rate as Ramadan — roughly 10 to 11 days earlier each year. The table above shows it: Ramazan Bayramı in March 2027, in February 2028; Kurban Bayramı in mid-May 2027, in early May 2028.

That matters more than it first sounds, because it means the seasons each Bayram lands in change. Kurban Bayramı currently falls in May, drifting into late April over the next few years, which is the heart of Turkey's best travel season. Ramazan Bayramı is leaving March for February.

Anyone who checked Turkish holiday dates on a previous trip and assumed they'd repeat is working from a calendar that has already moved.

What is legally closed

Banks, government offices and official institutions close on all national public holidays and on the full days of both Bayrams, plus the arife half-day from 13:00. The fixed national days are listed in Turkey's public holidays and what closes.

Commercial life is a different matter and follows no single rule — shops, restaurants and tourist businesses make their own decisions, and those decisions differ between a coastal resort in season and an inland town. Istanbul's Grand Bazaar closes on Sundays and on the first day of religious Bayrams, which is its own long-standing rule rather than a general one.

The extras nobody can predict

Two things routinely happen around Bayram that are decided year by year rather than fixed in advance.

Turkey does not automatically extend Bayram with bridge days; additional administrative leave for public-sector employees may be announced by decision on a year-by-year basis and published when decided. Some years the holiday is effectively longer than the legal block. Some years it isn't.

The other is transport. Toll-free passage over Bayram is not automatic: it is granted by a presidential decree published in the Official Gazette for that year's holiday window, and when granted it covers bridges and motorways operated by the General Directorate of Highways plus free municipal public transport, while excluding build-operate-transfer crossings such as the Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge.

Both are announced rather than scheduled, which is the practical point: the legal holiday can be looked up years ahead, and the extras cannot be looked up at all until that year's announcement.

The machinery behind all of this — who declares what, and when — is set out in how Turkey's holiday calendar is actually set.

Where these dates fall against the months a first trip is usually planned for is a question that runs across the seasonal guides rather than sitting inside any one of them. Turkey, Worked Out maps the calendar against the seasons in one place.