Navruz in Uzbekistan 2027: dates, days off, where to be

01

When is Navruz 2027, and how many days off?

Navruz is on Sunday 21 March 2027. The date is fixed: article 208 of the Labour Code lists 21 March among Uzbekistan’s non-working holidays. The same article says that when a day off coincides with a holiday, the day off moves to the next working day. Sunday is the common day off for five-day and six-day weeks alike, so the day off moves to Monday 22 March 2027.

That much is law. Whether the government adds more days is decided by a separate presidential decree for the whole year, and the 2027 one is not signed yet. The 2026 decree, UP-257 of 24 December 2025, applied article 208 and nothing more to Navruz: 21 March was a Saturday, so five-day-week workers got Monday 23 March off. For 2027 that gives most office workers Saturday 20 to Monday 22 March, and six-day workers Sunday and Monday. Anything beyond that is unknown until the decree.

The table sets out the last two years and what is expected for 2027. The 2025 and 2026 rows are past editions; the 2027 row changes when the decree is signed.

02

When will the 2027 days off and programme be announced?

Four separate announcements determine the days off and events during Navruz week. They are published at different times. The table shows when each appeared for the last two editions. A similar sequence is likely for 2027. Keep your bookings flexible until the dates and events you need are confirmed.

The 2026 decree says it expires on 1 January 2027 (president.uz, item 8), so a new one is needed. In both 2024 and 2025 it was signed on 24 December. The same decree sets the New Year days off, covered in Uzbekistan in winter. We will update this page within five days of the 2027 decree and again when the Navruz resolution and the Tashkent listings appear. Until then, treat any date beyond Sunday 21 and Monday 22 March as unconfirmed, including dates on tour-company pages.

In practice, when train tickets for the holiday go on sale in late January you will know the days off but not the venues. In 2026 the Tashkent venue list was published on 18 March, three days before the holiday.

03

Navruz and Ramazon hayit: two March holidays in 2027

In 2026 the two holidays ran together. The Muslim Board set the first day of Ramazon hayit on Friday 20 March, and PQ-106 confirmed it on 17 March, three days ahead. With the Navruz transfer, five-day-week workers had four days off in a row, 20–23 March (Kun.uz, 18 March 2026).

In 2027 they separate. Astronomers quoted by The National on 9 September 2026 expect Ramadan to start on about 8 February and Eid al-Fitr on 9 or 10 March 2027. The Labour Code makes the first day of Eid a holiday, and Women’s Day, 8 March, is a Monday in 2027. Early March may therefore get its own short run of holidays, about eleven days before Navruz. The Eid date stays an estimate until Uzbekistan’s resolution, which came three days ahead in 2026 and four in 2025 (PQ-124).

For the Navruz week itself this means no fasting month around it in 2027: Ramadan is expected to end before Navruz. What Ramadan means for visitors: dress code and etiquette.

04

What happens at Navruz, and can visitors join?

Navruz is a public spring festival, not a ticketed event. The 2026 resolution PQ-82 told organisers in Tashkent, the regional centres and every city and village to hold craft exhibitions, national-sport competitions, book fairs, discounted food markets and spring-food cooking contests, plus a separate people’s sayil (fair) at the Yangi O‘zbekiston complex in Tashkent. The street and park events are free and open to anyone who turns up.

The dish at the centre is sumalak, sprouted wheat cooked through the night in a large cauldron. The national tourism portal describes neighbours, mostly women, taking turns to stir it, then leaving it covered for six to seven hours before it is opened and shared in the morning. Tables also carry somsa with spring greens, nisholda (whipped egg white) and plov. The same page says smaller towns and villages hold kupkari (a horseback goat-carcass game) and kurash wrestling; we found no 2026 venue or date for either, so we would not build a day around them.

The distinction that matters is public versus private. Park and street events welcome visitors. A mahalla sumalak cook or a family table needs an invitation; if a host invites you, ask before photographing people and ask what the visit includes. More on home visits, photos and dress: dress code and etiquette.

Navruz is also on UNESCO’s intangible heritage list as an element shared by Uzbekistan and twelve other countries (UNESCO); Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are on the same entry, under their own spellings.

05

Where to celebrate in Tashkent

Tashkent has the most events and the only programme we found published venue by venue. In 2026 the city held festivities in all twelve districts. Afisha.uz listed the same activities for every site: tastings of national and spring dishes, sumalak, halim, somsa and plov cooking, concerts, craft exhibitions and national games. Podrobno.uz published the same venues that day.

Read the table as last year’s edition. Venues change, and the 2027 list is expected in mid-March 2027. For the city itself, see our Tashkent guide.

06

Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva at Navruz

PQ-82 orders celebrations in the regional centres too, so there will be public events in Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva. What we could not find is a dated 2026 programme for Bukhara or Khiva, from the regional administrations or the local press. For Samarkand we found one dated event: the third Navro‘z Regata on 21 March 2026 at the Eternal City complex in the Silk Road Samarkand tourist centre, with folk games, kites, Navruz food, a fashion show and a dragon-boat parade and race, reported that day by Samarkand International University of Technology.

So we do not rank the cities for Navruz. If the public festival is the reason for your trip, spend 21 March in Tashkent, where the programme was largest and published in full. If the monuments are the reason, choose the city for them and treat any Navruz event there as a bonus.

For Samarkand, the Registan ensemble directorate can be reached at +998 66 235-70-52 (registon.uz). In 2025 it marked Navruz with a greeting on its site, not a programme, so ask it about the square’s hours on the day rather than about events.

07

Booking trains and hotels around 21 March

Buy train tickets on the day they go on sale. The railway’s public offer starts sales at least 60 days before the train leaves its first station, at 10:00 local time. For Sunday 21 March 2027 that is Wednesday 20 January 2027. On 4 April 2026 the ticket operator Temiryo‘lekspress said that on holidays and weekends tickets on some routes run out fast because passenger numbers rise, and asked travellers to plan ahead.

Two things add pressure. The holiday decree exists to push domestic travel: UP-257 cites the Travel around Uzbekistan! programme and recommended that Uzbekistan Airways and Uzbekistan Railways run discounts for the long holidays (president.uz, item 4). And we expect the Saturday-to-Monday pattern of 2027 to make an easy three-day trip for Uzbek families.

For hotels we found no published occupancy figures, so we promise nothing either way. Our approach: book refundable rooms early for the nights of 20–22 March, then confirm once the programme is out. The booking guide explains buying tickets, the Afrosiyob page covers how returned seats reappear, and the Tashkent–Samarkand page lists the daily trains.

08

What is the weather like at Navruz?

Expect changeable spring weather. Uzhydromet’s March climate bulletin calls March one of Uzbekistan’s wettest months, with rain on 10–15 days in most of the country and 5–9 days in the north and the deserts. On the warmest days, most often in the second half of the month, the air reaches 23–28°C, and 30–33°C in the south.

Cold snaps still happen. The same bulletin notes that rain turns to snow when the temperature drops sharply; in March 2012 snow lay 7–12 cm deep on the plains. Most celebrations are outdoors in parks and streets, so pack a warm layer, a waterproof jacket and shoes that cope with wet ground.

Month-by-month spring choices are on our spring page, and the when-to-go guide compares the seasons.

09

What is open and what is closed?

The rule to plan by: daily services keep running, offices close. Article 208 withholds the transfer from work that cannot stop, such as continuous production, daily services to the public and shift work, and UP-257 repeated that exception for 2026. Trains, hotels and the holiday fairs run; offices on a five-day week are shut on the transferred day, expected to be Monday 22 March in 2027.

For museums and monuments there is no published holiday schedule. For the long 2026 holidays UP-257 told the Tourism Committee and the Cultural Heritage Agency to arrange discounts and promotions at museums, heritage sites and hotels, which assumes they open, but the 2027 decree may say something different. If a specific museum on 21 or 22 March matters to you, ask the site or ask us to check it for your date.

10

What can go wrong at Navruz

Most problems come from treating Navruz like a festival with one site and a timetable. These are the ones to plan around.

• There is no single festival ground or ticket. Events are spread across parks and streets, and in 2026 the Tashkent list came out three days ahead.
• The days off are not final until the late-December decree, and the Eid date is not final until a resolution a few days before it.
• Trains on holiday dates run out fast on some routes, as the railway itself said in April 2026. If you miss the first sale day, watch for returned seats.
• A cold, wet 21 March is normal in the climate record. Keep an indoor plan for the day.
• The free central venues are the capital’s main public event of the spring, so expect to share them. With children, a district park earlier in the day is the calmer choice.
• We could not confirm kupkari or kurash venues, or any 2026 programme for Bukhara and Khiva.

11

How to fit Navruz into a 7- or 10-day route

Keep 21 March free of long transfers and be in your festival city by the evening of the 20th. On the 10-day itinerary, arriving on 20 March puts day 2 in Tashkent on Navruz; the day-3 train to Samarkand is then on Monday 22 March, itself a day off, so buy it when sales open on 21 January.

The 7-day route has one Tashkent night at the start, so arriving on 20 March puts the Samarkand train on Navruz itself. Either add a second Tashkent night at the start or run the route so that its final Tashkent days fall on 21 March.

If you want us to arrange the trip around Navruz, send your dates, whether the festival or the monuments matter more, and your group size. We can buy the train tickets when sales open and confirm the 2027 programme for you once it is published.

Common questions