Diwali Vacation 2027 in Schools: What the Official Calendars Say

Diwali Vacation 2027 in Schools: What the Official Calendars Say

No school board has published Diwali vacation 2027 dates yet. As of 22 October 2026, none of the five official calendars we opened (UP Board, Karnataka, West Bengal, Delhi's Directorate of Education and Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan) covers the 2027-28 session, and we found no CBSE holiday list on cbse.gov.in. What is fixed is the festival: Lakshmi Puja falls on Friday 29 October 2027, with Dhanteras on 27 October and Bhai Dooj on 31 October.

Families also decide later than schools publish. SubhSandesh's nearest festival measurement, Raksha Bandhan 2026 (n = 89 pages, a different and one-day festival), found 49.4% of greeting pages built on the festival day itself and not one built more than 7 days ahead. This page sets out what each official calendar did with Diwali 2026, when the 2027-28 versions are likely to appear, and how to read your own school's dates.

Why no school has Diwali 2027 dates yet: calendars arrive weeks before each session

Indian school calendars are issued one academic session at a time, and the session that contains Diwali 2027 has not been planned yet. Uttar Pradesh's Madhyamik Shiksha Parishad sent its 2026-27 academic calendar to district officers on 23 March 2026, nine days before the session opened on 1 April 2026. Karnataka's school education commissionerate fixed its 2025-26 terms and holidays in an order dated 2 April 2025 for a session that began on 29 May 2025.

West Bengal runs on the calendar year instead. The West Bengal Board of Secondary Education issued its Annual Academic Calendar of 2026 on 29 December 2025, three days before that year began. On those timings, April-start and June-start boards would publish 2027-28 calendars around March to May 2027, and West Bengal its 2027 calendar around late December 2026. That is an estimate from one year's timing, not an announced date.

Diwali 2027 falls on Friday 29 October: the five days a break has to cover

The five festival days in 2027 run from Wednesday to Sunday: Dhanteras on 27 October, Choti Diwali (Naraka Chaturdashi) on 28 October, Lakshmi Puja on 29 October, Govardhan Puja on 30 October and Bhai Dooj on 31 October. In Tamil Nadu, holiday listings put Deepavali on 29 October while drikpanchang's Tamil calendar gives 28 October, so a Tamil Nadu school could mark either day until the state notifies it.

Two features of these dates matter for a school break. Diwali comes 10 days earlier than in 2026, when it fell on Sunday 8 November, which pulls it closer to October exam windows. And because Lakshmi Puja is a Friday, a school that closes only for the main day gives a three-day weekend wherever Saturday is already off.

What the official 2026-27 calendars did with Diwali 2026

Each official document handles Diwali differently, and only some of them create a vacation at all. The table compares the five we fetched on 22 October 2026, with Diwali 2026 as each one prints it.

The pattern across the five is that India's long autumn school break follows regional festivals, not Diwali everywhere. Whatever a list says, the version your own school issues for 2027-28 is the one that decides.

Uttar Pradesh: half-yearly exams come before the festival

The UP Board calendar is an exam timetable as much as a holiday plan. It schedules half-yearly practicals in the fourth week of September 2026, the written half-yearly exam in the second and third weeks of October 2026, and the upload of those marks by the first week of November. The calendar itself lists no Diwali vacation, so holidays come from separate state lists.

In 2026 that sequence left more than two weeks between the last paper and Diwali on 8 November. If the 2027-28 calendar repeats the same October window, the last papers would land roughly a week before Dhanteras on 27 October 2027. That is an inference from a single calendar, so treat it as a planning range, not a date.

Karnataka: the long autumn break is Dasara, not Diwali

Karnataka's state-syllabus schools take their autumn vacation for Dasara. The 2025-26 order closed schools from 20 September to 7 October 2025, an 18-day break, and reopened them for a second term running to 10 April 2026, so Diwali on 20 October 2025 fell during term time. The order's own month table gives October 2025 12 holidays and 19 working days, against 242 working days for the whole year.

Families in southern states should therefore expect festival days off around Diwali 2027, not a fortnight. The 2026-27 version of this order was not linked from the department's homepage when we checked on 22 October 2026, so its Dasara dates are not given here.

West Bengal, Delhi and KVS: holiday lists, not a vacation block

Three of the documents fix holidays rather than a Diwali vacation. WBBSE's 2026 calendar budgets 65 holidays and 30 examination days out of 313 non-Sunday days, leaving 218 teaching days, but leaves the dates themselves to separate notifications. Delhi's Directorate of Education forwarded the Delhi government's 2026 holiday list to its schools; in it Diwali was a Sunday, 8 November, and Govardhan Puja and Bhai Duj were restricted holidays that an employee may pick.

Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan's e-Calendar 2026 follows the same central structure. Diwali on 8 November is a gazetted holiday, while Naraka Chaturdasi, Govardhan Puja (9 November) and Bhai Duj (11 November) sit in the restricted list. For 2027 the central list already gazettes Friday 29 October, so the main day becomes a weekday off instead of a lost Sunday.

How to find your school's Diwali 2027 dates before you book

The official calendar will come, but not before most families start planning. These five checks narrow the dates in the meantime, each tied to a document above.

• Ask the school office which month it releases the 2027-28 calendar; on 2026 timing, expect March to May 2027 for April-start and June-start boards.
• Read your state's 2027 holiday list when it appears; Delhi's 2026 list was dated 4 December 2025, so a December 2026 release is plausible.
• Check whether your board puts exams in October 2027, as UP's 2026-27 calendar did in the second and third weeks.
• In southern states, look for the Dasara vacation first; Karnataka's 2025-26 break ended on 7 October.
• Confirm your school's Saturday rule, because a Friday Diwali only becomes a three-day weekend where Saturday is a holiday.

Why the length of a break matters: what research on school breaks found

A 2026 study in the Journal of School Health looked at 3,358 mental health-related emergency visits by 5- to 18-year-olds at one US academic medical centre between 2018 and 2023. Visits made during school breaks were more likely to end in inpatient admission than visits during term, with an odds ratio of 1.30, and the authors suggest schools reach students before breaks begin. We read the abstract only, and the study covers US breaks, not Diwali.

The finding cannot be moved directly onto a five-day Indian festival break. It does support one practical habit: a child's routine changes sharply when school closes, so the week before a break is when teachers and parents should check in, not the first day of the next term.

When the vacation does not bring everyone home

Not every family is under one roof for Diwali. A student in a hostel whose break covers only the festival days, or a grandparent in another city, may spend Lakshmi Puja away from the people they would choose. A call covers most of that, and for one person you want to wish properly, SubhSandesh's interactive Diwali wishes card lets them light a diya at their door with your tag, open your letter from a shagun liffafa and find up to six of your photos in sky lanterns. It takes about five minutes to build and opens as a private link in any browser, which matters because 48.3% of shared SubhSandesh pages are opened on a phone.

For a parent who wants something slower than a festival card, The Last Piece photo jigsaw reveals a line of your letter with each piece placed, which suits a child with free hours in a hostel. Neither page replaces the school calendar or a trip home, and both are the wrong choice when the child will be home anyway: hand them the diya instead. Timing is the other limit. Our Raksha Bandhan 2026 data, a small sample of 89 pages from a different festival, shows 86.1% of on-time pages were built within 24 hours of the day, so leave room for a late decision.

Sources

• Madhyamik Shiksha Parishad, Uttar Pradesh: Academic calendar for session 2026-27, letter dated 23 March 2026.
• Commissioner of School Education, Karnataka: Academic terms and holiday periods for 2025-26, order dated 2 April 2025.
• West Bengal Board of Secondary Education: Annual Academic Calendar of 2026, notification dated 29 December 2025.
• Directorate of Education, Delhi: Circular forwarding GAD notification of 4 December 2025 on holidays during 2026.
• Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan: e-Calendar 2026, list of holidays (file created December 2025).
• Journal of School Health (2026): Trends in pediatric mental health-related emergency department visits during the school year and school breaks, published 1 September 2026.