Christmas Day falls on Friday 25 December 2026 and New Year’s Day on Friday 1 January 2027, with four ordinary working days between them. Four days of annual leave, taken from Monday 28 to Thursday 31 December, carry the two long weekends into one run of ten days off that starts on Christmas morning and ends on Sunday 3 January. The Ministry of Manpower counts both Fridays among Singapore’s 11 paid public holidays.
Two Fridays, two long weekends
Each Friday carries a Saturday and Sunday with it, so neither end of the break needs any leave to become a three-day weekend. Christmas runs Friday 25 to Sunday 27 December. New Year runs Friday 1 to Sunday 3 January 2027.
The dates in between are where the decision sits. Monday 28, Tuesday 29, Wednesday 30 and Thursday 31 December are the only working days separating one long weekend from the next.
Four days of leave covers 28 to 31 December
Book those four and the calendar reads: Friday 25, Saturday 26, Sunday 27, Monday 28, Tuesday 29, Wednesday 30, Thursday 31 December, Friday 1, Saturday 2 and Sunday 3 January. Ten days away, four of them charged to annual leave.
How much leave there is to charge it to depends on length of service. Under section 88A of the Employment Act, an employee who has served at least three months gets seven days of paid annual leave in the first 12 months with an employer, one more day for each following 12 months, to a maximum of 14. Anyone who joined partway through the year has that entitlement pro-rated by completed months of service.
In a first year of service, four days is more than half of the seven the Act guarantees. The same four days sit easily against the 14 available from the eighth year of continuous service. Leave banked for a January trip is a separate draw on the same balance.
The school year restarts on 4 January
The Ministry of Education ends the 2026 school year on Friday 20 November, with the year-end holidays running from Saturday 21 November to Thursday 31 December. The 2027 year begins on Monday 4 January for Kindergarten 1, Primary 1 and secondary students, and on Tuesday 5 January for Kindergarten 2 and Primary 2 to 6. Term I ends on Friday 12 March.
That puts the final weekend of the school break at Saturday 2 and Sunday 3 January, the tail of the ten days. A household that takes the four working days off spends the last fortnight of the holidays together and is at the school gate on the Monday or Tuesday the term begins.
The arrival card for the flight home
Anyone flying out over those ten days has a document to file before the return leg. The Immigration and Checkpoints Authority requires the SG Arrival Card and electronic health declaration from all travellers before they arrive, apart from those transiting or transferring through Singapore without clearing immigration and residents entering through Woodlands or Tuas.
Submission opens three days before arrival, counting the arrival day itself, so a flight landing on Sunday 3 January can be filed from Friday 1 January. One submission can carry up to three trips. It is free through the ICA website or the MyICA app, and ICA does not endorse paid third-party submission services.
The enhanced version of the card moved into the app on 30 September with passport-scan autofill and 19 language options, and the 30 September app update decides whether the QR code opens at a land checkpoint. An app still on the older version will not produce it, and the update is worth doing at home rather than at the barrier.
