You can find the mathematically perfect overlap window between San Francisco and Tokyo — both sides at reasonable hours, neither dialing in from bed — and still pick a slot that nobody on the Tokyo side will attend. Because it's Marine Day. Or the Emperor's Birthday. Or Coming-of-Age Day.
Time-zone math is the easy part of scheduling across regions. Local holidays are the hard part, because most scheduling tools don't know about them — and you probably don't know all of them either. When was the last time you remembered Diwali, Eid al-Fitr, Lunar New Year, Marine Day, and Anzac Day at once?
TimeZoneMeet has carried local-holiday awareness across all scheduling surfaces (the city lookup, the Schedule page, the Map) since the holiday-awareness release. Here's what's worth knowing about how holidays affect cross-time-zone meetings, and how to use the feature.
The holidays that derail cross-time-zone meetings most
Not every holiday matters for scheduling. A day where banks are closed but offices stay open is fine for a meeting. The ones that actually empty calendars are national public holidays, where most of the workforce takes the day off.
| Region | Most-likely-to-surprise-you holidays |
|---|---|
| Japan | Coming-of-Age Day (2nd Mon Jan), Showa Day (Apr 29), Constitution Memorial Day (May 3), Children's Day (May 5), Marine Day (3rd Mon Jul), Mountain Day (Aug 11), Respect-for-the-Aged Day (3rd Mon Sep), Autumnal Equinox (~Sep 22-23), Health-Sports Day (2nd Mon Oct), Culture Day (Nov 3), Labor Thanksgiving (Nov 23), Emperor's Birthday (Feb 23) |
| India | Republic Day (Jan 26), Holi (date varies), Diwali (date varies), Independence Day (Aug 15), Gandhi Jayanti (Oct 2). Many regional public holidays — Karnataka has different holidays from Maharashtra. |
| China + Hong Kong + Taiwan | Lunar New Year (mid Jan to mid Feb, varies; usually a week off), Qingming (Apr 4-6), Labor Day (May 1, often a 3-day weekend), Dragon Boat Festival (date varies), Mid-Autumn Festival (date varies), National Day (Oct 1, often a week off). |
| Middle East + North Africa | Eid al-Fitr (date varies, end of Ramadan), Eid al-Adha (date varies). Note: in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, the workweek is often Sun–Thu, so Fridays may be a low-availability day even without a holiday. |
| Europe | Christmas + Boxing Day (Dec 25-26), Easter Monday (varies), May 1 Labor Day (most of EU), Bastille Day (Jul 14, France), Constitution Day (specific dates per country). Many countries take "bridge" days between holidays and weekends. |
| Americas | US: Thanksgiving (4th Thu Nov, often a 4-day weekend), Memorial Day, Independence Day. Brazil: Carnival (varies, usually Feb-Mar, ~5 days). Mexico: Independence Day (Sep 16), Day of the Dead (Nov 1-2). |
| Australia + NZ | Australia Day (Jan 26 — same date as India's Republic Day), Anzac Day (Apr 25), Queen's/King's Birthday (date varies by state). |
How TimeZoneMeet surfaces this
City lookup: when you look up a city's current time, the result includes a chip if today is a national holiday there. So a quick check of "what time is it in Tokyo" also tells you "by the way, everyone's at the beach today."
Schedule + Map pages: each candidate meeting window is annotated with a 🎉 badge if either side falls on a national holiday in that city. The badge shows the holiday's name and which city it applies to. You can pick around it before the slot turns into a missed meeting.
Pro filter — "Skip days when either city has a public holiday": a checkbox under the Schedule form. With it on, the scheduler drops slots that fall on a public holiday in either side. Free users see the badge but no filtering; Pro users get the badge AND the filtered list. Useful when you're planning a week's worth of meetings and don't want to evaluate each badge by hand.
What's a "public holiday" for scheduling purposes
TimeZoneMeet uses the date-holidays database (200+ countries). The library distinguishes:
- Public — national holiday; most workforce off. This is what we filter on.
- Bank — banks closed but most offices stay open (e.g. some US Federal Reserve days).
- School — schools out.
- Optional / observance — culturally observed (e.g. Halloween, Mother's Day) but not a day off.
The badges surface all categories so you have context, but only the "public" category triggers the Pro skip-holidays filter. Bank and observance days don't empty calendars; "St. Patrick's Day" is a fine day for a meeting in Dublin, even though it shows a badge.
Limitations to know
- Regional holidays inside a country. The database knows national holidays. Karnataka State's formation day (Nov 1) doesn't show up for Bengaluru queries because TimeZoneMeet uses country-level data. For sub-national holidays, ask the local team.
- Religious holidays with shifting dates. Eid, Diwali, Lunar New Year, Easter, Passover, etc. all shift each year. The library handles them correctly for years in the supported range, but if you're planning years ahead, double-check with a local calendar.
- Cultural significance ≠ public holiday. Mother's Day in the US is widely observed but isn't a public holiday, so it won't trigger a skip. Use your judgment.
Practical rules of thumb
- If you're scheduling something into Asia/Pacific from US/EU, glance at the badges. The Asia/Pacific calendar has more public holidays than US/UK calendars (Japan in particular has 16 per year), and they cluster differently from Western expectations.
- For India, the period around Diwali (late October / early November) and major regional festivals can be thin — even when there's no national public holiday on a specific date, leave room.
- For China, the Lunar New Year week (varies by year, mid-Jan to mid-Feb) and the Oct 1 National Day week are effectively off for most companies.
- For Middle Eastern teams, remember that the weekend may be Fri–Sat (not Sat–Sun).
Related reading
- Scheduling meetings across time zones without the headache — the broader scheduling primer.
- How DST silently breaks your recurring meeting — the other "didn't see it coming" failure mode.
- Follow-the-sun handoffs — when your team coverage spans multiple holiday calendars.