Bank Holidays: Banks To Be Closed On March 26, March 27, March 28 & March 29; Ram Navami To Fourth Saturday

Banks are in for a long weekend due to the festival holiday and the fourth Saturday of the month. In total, all scheduled commercial banks in India are going to be closed for four days in a row, starting from March 26th to March 29th. One of the major reason for this long holiday is the celebration of Shree Ram Navami. However, bank holidays vary from city to city.

Bank Holiday On March 26:

Banks are closed in some cities due to celebration of Ram Navami. These include Ahmedabad, Aizawl, Belapur, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Jaipur, Kanpur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur and Shimla.

Bank Holiday On March 27:

Meanwhile, banks will be closed in cities like Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Gangtok, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Patna, Ranchi, and Vijayawada on March 27th for the celebration of Shree Ram Navami (Chaite Dasain).

Ram Navami 2026:

Rama Navami, festival in Hinduism that celebrates the birthday of the god Rama, hero of the Ramayana and seventh avatar of the god Vishnu. Rama Navami ("ninth of Rama") occurs on the ninth day of the month of Chaitra in the Hindu calendar (March-April on the Gregorian calendar). It is also the ninth and final day of the spring (vasanta) Navratri festival. Hindus celebrate this holiday for Rama in their homes and in temples, and with particular pomp in the Indian city of Ayodhya, which Hindus consider to be his birthplace and childhood home, as per Britannica.

Bank Holiday On Fourth Saturday?

On March 28th, all banks in the India will be closed including rural, regional, local and foreign banks apart from the scheduled private and public banks. This is because March 28th is the fourth Saturday of the month, which is a holiday.

Banks follow a unique pattern on weekend holiday. While the first and third Saturdays of a month, is a working day for banks. They are closed on second and fourth Saturdays of the month. If there is a fifth Saturday in a month, then that would be a working day as well.

Since September 2015, RBI has directed that all scheduled and non-scheduled banks - public, private, foreign, cooperative, regional rural and local area banks - will observe public holiday on second and fourth Saturdays.

Accordingly, payment systems will not be operated on second and fourth Saturdays but would operate for full day on working Saturdays. Payment systems typically includes Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS), National Electronic Fund Transfer (NEFT), Cheque Clearing operated by various Bankers' Clearing Houses in the country including the grid based Cheque Truncation System (CTS) and ECS suite [Electronic Clearing Service (ECS), Regional Electronic Clearing Service (RECS) and National Electronic Clearing Service (NECS)].

Bank Holiday On March 29:

March 29 falls on Sunday, which is a defaulted bank holiday.