Chuseok 2026: Sept 24–27, and Why There Is No Extra Day Off
Chuseok 2026 falls on Friday, September 25. The break runs four days with no substitute holiday — here is the clause that decides it, plus what closes, what opens and when KTX tickets go on sale.
Liberation Day falls on a Saturday in 2026, so Korea takes Monday, August 17 off instead. The third day of Chuseok also lands on a Saturday that year. Nobody gets a Monday for it.
Two kinds of holidays follow two different substitution rules, and 2026 is the year that gap becomes visible on the calendar. The break runs Thursday, September 24 through Sunday, September 27. Four days, and that is all of it.
At a glance
| Item | 2026 |
|---|---|
| Chuseok itself | Friday, September 25 — the 15th day of the 8th lunar month |
| Statutory holidays | September 24 (Thu), September 25 (Fri), September 26 (Sat) |
| Actual continuous break | September 24 (Thu) – September 27 (Sun) — four days |
| Substitute holiday | None. Monday, September 28 is a normal workday |
| Liberation Day, same year | August 15 (Sat) → Monday, August 17 becomes a holiday |
| National Foundation Day | October 3 (Sat) → Monday, October 5 becomes a holiday |
| Vietnam's Mid-Autumn Festival | Also September 25 — but not a public holiday there |
| Holiday train tickets | Sale date not announced as of August 6, 2026 |
The interesting cell in that table is the empty one. Knowing that Korea rests for four days tells you nothing about what you can actually do during them, and the answer varies wildly by industry. Banks shut for the entire stretch. Department stores close for a single day. Palaces do the opposite — they throw the gates open and drop the admission fee.
Only the lunar holidays ignore Saturdays
Substitute holidays are set by Article 3 of Korea's Regulation on Public Holidays for Government Offices, and that article sorts holidays into two groups.
Paragraph 1, item 1 covers the national days — Independence Movement Day, Liberation Day, National Foundation Day, Hangeul Day — plus Buddha's Birthday, Children's Day and Christmas. If any of those collide with a Saturday or a Sunday, the next non-holiday becomes a day off.
Item 2 pulls Seollal and Chuseok out into their own category. The three-day lunar holidays get a substitute only when they overlap with a Sunday.
Saturdays do not count.
The 2026 Chuseok block is Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Not one of those days touches a Sunday, so September 28 is an ordinary Monday and Korea goes back to work.
You can watch the same regulation produce opposite outcomes twice in the same year. August 15 is a Saturday, so August 17 becomes a holiday. October 3 is a Saturday, so October 5 becomes a holiday. Chuseok, sitting between them, lets its Saturday go. If you know what August 15 actually commemorates in Korea, the asymmetry reads as even stranger.
Banks close first, convenience stores close last
| Business | Chuseok day (Sept 25) | The other three days |
|---|---|---|
| Bank branches | Closed | Closed all four days. ATMs and apps work normally |
| Department stores | Closing all locations is the long-standing practice | Some branches take an extra day or two |
| Hypermarkets | Varies store by store | Often open on shortened hours |
| Convenience stores | Open, 24 hours | Open |
| Subway and city buses | Holiday timetable | Late-night extensions on lines serving stations and terminals |
| Palaces, Jongmyo, royal tombs | Free admission | Free admission |
| Clinics and pharmacies | Rotating duty roster | Emergency rooms run 24 hours |
Numbers from Chuseok 2025 give the shape of it. Lotte Department Store closed all 29 branches on the eve and the day itself. Emart kept 90 of its 133 stores open on the holiday. Lotte Mart closed about 30 of 112 and ran the rest an hour late, closing at 10 p.m. On the medical side, an average of 8,799 clinics and 6,964 pharmacies opened each day, and 413 designated emergency facilities stayed open around the clock.
But what actually traps a visitor is not shopping. It is movement. Being unable to reach Busan because every seat on every train is gone is a normal Chuseok experience.
Stay inside Seoul and the holiday works in your favour — the roads empty out and the subway runs on its usual holiday schedule. This is the week when a single transit card with an unlimited daily cap earns its keep.
The palaces are free for all four days
The Royal Palaces and Tombs Center opens Gyeongbokgung, Changdeokgung, Changgyeonggung and Deoksugung — plus Jongmyo Shrine and the Joseon royal tombs — with no closing day and no admission fee across every major holiday. For Chuseok 2024 that meant five straight days, September 14 to 18, and Jongmyo, which normally admits visitors only on timed guided tours, could be walked freely. Changdeokgung's Secret Garden was the one exclusion.
There is a catch.
The day after the free period ends is a closing day. In 2024 that was September 19.
Special programming clusters here too: the changing of the guard at Gyeongbokgung, night viewings, and Changdeokgung's Moonlight Tour. And if you miss the free window entirely, there is a second door — rent a hanbok and palace admission is waived any day of the year. The guideline in force since July 1, 2025 requires a separate top and bottom — one-piece garments such as the cheollik, or the king's gonryongpo, do not qualify.
Nobody knows the ticket date yet
As of August 6, 2026, Korail has not announced when Chuseok tickets go on sale. What exists is the precedent set by Seollal earlier the same year. For trains running February 13–18, Korail opened advance booking on January 15–16 for passengers with disabilities, senior citizens and national merit recipients, then general booking on January 19–21, split across three days by rail line. There were no counter sales at all — the whole thing was online. That put the opening roughly a month before the holiday began.
One variable is new this year. On August 3 at 9 a.m., the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, Korail and SR launched Korail+, a single app that books both KTX and SRT trains. Tickets for the merged services that begin running on September 1 went on sale August 5 at 10 a.m. through the app and Korail's website. From September, weekly capacity rises by 116,000 seats and fares run about 10 percent below the old KTX price. Chuseok tickets will open inside this app.
There is exactly one thing worth doing right now. Holiday tickets are sold only to registered Korail members, so finish the sign-up and install the app before the sale date is announced.
It could still become five days — it did three years ago
Chuseok 2023 had the identical weekday layout. The holidays ran Thursday, September 28 through Saturday, September 30, and no substitute day attached. The government then designated Monday, October 2 as a temporary public holiday, and with National Foundation Day right behind it the break stretched to six days. Temporary holidays are possible because Article 2 of the same regulation leaves an open slot for "other days designated by the government from time to time."
Highway toll waivers work the same way. For Chuseok 2025 all expressway tolls were suspended from midnight on October 4 until midnight on October 7, but that decision is voted through the Cabinet separately every year. Nothing has been tabled for 2026 yet.
Four days is what is confirmed. Room to grow is what is left.
What this means where you are
| Where you're from | September 25, 2026 | What to plan around |
|---|---|---|
| United States, Canada | Unlike Thanksgiving or Christmas, most Korean retail stays open | Worry about seats, not shops. Trains and express buses sell out first |
| United Kingdom, Europe | No equivalent lunar holiday; this is not a bank-holiday shutdown | Museums and palaces are the best value that week, not the worst |
| Vietnam | The same lunar date is Tết Trung thu — a Friday in 2026, but not a day off | The identical date runs backwards in the two countries: Korean cities empty, Vietnamese streets fill at night |
| Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines | The 8th lunar month is not a national holiday | The premium shows up in Korean domestic travel, not in your airfare |
| Japan | Obon has already passed in August | Late-September Seoul hotels can actually be quieter than usual |
That table decides the character of the four days. For Koreans, Chuseok is the window for going home. For a visitor, it is the window when Seoul goes quiet. Two sentences pointing at the same dates from opposite directions.
Walk through central Seoul on the morning of the holiday itself and you can see the reversal. No traffic, half the cafés shuttered, everyone concentrated in front of the palace gates. If you want one thing that is certainly open, it is the convenience store.
So the question is not how many days off Korea gets. It is which direction you want to be pointing during them.
Read next
- Korean Seollal and Vietnamese Tết start on the same day in 2026 — the time off differs threefold — the same lunar calendar, two very different holidays
- Korean age left the law in 2023, but alcohol, tobacco, conscription and school years still use the old count — for when someone asks your age over the holiday table
- Rent one outfit and the palaces are free — the door that stays open after the free-admission window closes
- A 3,000-won card with a 5,000-won daily cap — if you are staying inside Seoul
- The seven things foreign visitors buy most in Korean convenience stores — reliably open on the holiday itself
- The date the film Assassins chose: August 15 — the holiday that does get a substitute day
Sources
- Nongmin Newspaper — Constitution Day returns as a holiday after 18 years: what's left on the 2026 calendar
- Korean Law Information Center — Regulation on Public Holidays for Government Offices
- Korea.kr — Palaces, Jongmyo and royal tombs open free over the Chuseok holiday
- Korea.kr — Revised guideline on free palace admission for hanbok wearers
- Korea.kr — Expressway tolls waived October 4–7 for the Chuseok holiday
- Newspim — KTX and SRT in one app: Korail+ launches August 3
- IssueOn — Korail confirms the 2026 Seollal ticket sale schedule
- The Medical — 8,800 clinics open daily over the Chuseok holiday
- News1 — Department stores, outlets and hypermarkets: closures and shortened hours by branch