Closure expectation
HighBuddha's Birthday is modeled as a public holiday in South Korea; expect office, bank, school, and service-hour changes unless a local exception applies.
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Holiday guide
Global holiday guide rooted in South Korea's calendar, observed nationwide.
Next occurrence
May 13, 2027
Thursday · Asia/Seoul
Next occurrence
May 13, 2027
Thursday
Observed in
2 countries
Current holiday dataset
Primary context
South Korea
Public
Planning timezone
Asia/Seoul
UTC+09:00
Next: May 13, 2027 (Thursday)
Buddha's Birthday is one of the clearest examples of a religious holiday whose public importance depends on regional tradition and state recognition. In the current dataset this holiday appears in 2 country calendars, with the strongest concentration in Asia (2).
Last updated recently. Dates draw from the curated holiday catalog (tracked window 2025-2027); cultural context comes from the source-cited curation library when an entry exists.
Local statutory mode, country coverage, date rule, timezone spread, and related planning context for Buddha's Birthday.
Primary calendar
South Korea · Public
Cultural family
Buddhist lunisolar feast · East Asia
Observed scope
Nationwide observance
Coverage reach
2 countries in the current holiday dataset
Timezone context
Asia/Seoul (UTC+09:00)
Next date signal
May 13, 2027 · Thursday
Forward window
2025: May 5, 2025 · 2026: May 24, 2026 · 2027: May 13, 2027
Related planning set
Chuseok · Lunar New Year · New Year's Day
Regional spread
Asia 2
Reference posture
3 source-cited dossier references plus catalog dates
The rows below are built from this holiday's actual route, country, local-name, date, rule, timezone, observed-country, and adjacent-calendar records. They make Buddha's Birthday in South Korea distinct from holidays with similar names or the same season.
Route identity
buddha-s-birthday · Buddha's Birthday · South Korea · KR
Local name and scope
부처님 오신 날 · Public · nationwide
Rule and family
Buddhist lunisolar feast · East Asia · lunar / lunisolar
Country/date clusters
May 13, 2027 (2)
Observed type mix
Public: 2
Forward date window
2027: May 13, 2027 (Thursday)
Timezone anchor
Asia/Seoul · Asia/Seoul (UTC+09:00)
Calendar neighbors
previous: Children's Day (8 days before) · next: Memorial Day (24 days after)
Source depth
3 curated source citations plus catalog dates
The practical risk is not just the date. Buddha's Birthday can affect closure expectations, bridge-day leave, country-specific substitutions, cross-border date drift, and timezone reminders differently in each jurisdiction.
Closure expectation
HighBuddha's Birthday is modeled as a public holiday in South Korea; expect office, bank, school, and service-hour changes unless a local exception applies.
Date confidence
Catalog onlyBuddha's Birthday uses tracked catalog rows for the visible forward window. lunar / lunisolar holidays stay inside the source window when extrapolation would be risky.
Bridge-day pressure
ThursdayBuddha's Birthday next falls on May 13, 2027 (Thursday). High bridge-day pressure: Friday often becomes the unofficial leave day after a Thursday holiday.
Cross-border drift
AlignedBuddha's Birthday appears in 2 country calendars with 1 next-date cluster. Do not assume every country observes it on the South Korea date.
Timezone handling
Single zoneSouth Korea has a single primary timezone in this country record, so date-boundary risk is lower than in multi-zone countries.
Source posture
DossierBuddha's Birthday has 3 curated source citations rendered on the page, plus catalog dates and country metadata.
This page keeps the date answer separate from statutory verification. The catalog supplies the tracked date rows; the checkpoints below show which authority, story profile, local specificity, and dossier layer should be reviewed when the holiday affects bookings, payroll, travel, or public-service hours.
Country authority checkpoint
Korean national-holiday calendar; Lunar-calendar holiday announcements
Story and rule checkpoint
lunar holiday profile: Buddha's Birthday is one of the clearest examples of a religious holiday whose public importance depends on regional tradition and state recognition.
Local specificity checkpoint
Local specificity comes from the selected country calendar row, local name, observance type, timezone record, nearby holidays, and observed cross-country date spread.
Dossier checkpoint
In South Korea, Buddha's Birthday and Christmas Day are the two statutory holidays of explicitly religious origin — together they encode the country's roughly balanced Buddhist-Christian demographic in public-holiday law. In Hong Kong, the slug sits in the late-April / early-May cluster alongside Ching Ming Festival (early April), Labour Day (1 May), and Tuen Ng / Dragon Boat (June), forming a series of frequently long weekends in Q2. The slug is deliberately distinct from Japan's Hanamatsuri because Japan fixes the date to Gregorian 8 April rather than the lunisolar reckoning used by Korea and Hong Kong. Source citations are rendered in the holiday-specific dossier.
Reference stack
This block separates the local South Korea holiday answer from two common sources of programmatic-calendar confusion: countries that use the same holiday name on different dates, and future rows that are projected from a rule rather than directly tracked.
Cross-border date spread
Buddha's Birthday lands on the same next observed date across all 2 listed country calendars in this dataset.
Projection reliability
Buddha's Birthday stays inside the tracked catalog window for forward dates because its lunar / lunisolar rule is not safely extrapolated here. Source posture: 3 curated source citations attached.
Observed next-date clusters
May 13, 2027
2 countries · Hong Kong, South Korea
Observed type mix across countries
Name in South Korea
부처님 오신 날
The local catalog name for South Korea is 부처님 오신 날; the English display name is Buddha's Birthday.
Country calendar role
Buddha's Birthday is recorded in South Korea as a public holiday with nationwide scope.
Other local labels in this holiday family
Reference fields include Buddha's Birthday's country, date behavior, timezone context, related holidays, and observed-country coverage.
The observance comes from Buddhist ritual calendars and often centers on temple visits, lantern displays, prayer, and acts of merit or reflection.
Its public visibility varies by country, but where it is a holiday it stands out as a major spiritual date with a recognizably different tone from civic commemorations.
Buddha's Birthday is marked as a nationwide observance in the current South Korea holiday data.
Buddha's Birthday follows a lunar or lunisolar calendar tradition, so the Gregorian date changes from year to year. In the tracked data window, the dates land on 2025: May 5, 2026: May 24, 2027: May 13.
Because Buddha's Birthday follows a lunar or lunisolar calendar, the Gregorian date moves significantly each year and statutory recognition often spans several days, so reading the official block is more useful than the headline date.
The current static build keeps the tracked 2025-2027 date window online for curated holiday detail pages.
| Year | Date | Day |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | May 5, 2025 | Monday |
| 2026 | May 24, 2026 | Sunday |
| 2027 | May 13, 2027 | Thursday |
Rows below come straight from the tracked catalog window (2025-2027). The weekday distribution controls long-weekend math each year.
| Year | Date | Weekday | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2027 | May 13, 2027 | Thursday | Catalog |
Seasonal placement
Buddha's Birthday next lands in the spring planning band for South Korea. That matters for school terms, travel season, and whether the holiday sits near year-end, spring religious calendars, summer travel, or autumn civic cycles.
Weekday distribution in this window
Buddha's Birthday comes out of Buddhist ritual practice, with temple visits, lantern displays, and merit-making rather than parade-style public ceremony, and the date follows a lunisolar calendar that drifts year to year.
Searches for Buddha's Birthday typically want the temple-event date, statutory recognition in South Korea, and whether offices and schools are closed.
Cultural family
Buddhist lunisolar feast
Origin region: East Asia
Statutory mode
Buddha's Birthday is listed as a public holiday in South Korea (nationwide), which usually means government offices, banks, and most schools close.
Differentiates from neighbors
In South Korea, Buddha's Birthday and Christmas Day are the two statutory holidays of explicitly religious origin — together they encode the country's roughly balanced Buddhist-Christian demographic in public-holiday law. In Hong Kong, the slug sits in the late-April / early-May cluster alongside Ching Ming Festival (early April), Labour Day (1 May), and Tuen Ng / Dragon Boat (June), forming a series of frequently long weekends in Q2. The slug is deliberately distinct from Japan's Hanamatsuri because Japan fixes the date to Gregorian 8 April rather than the lunisolar reckoning used by Korea and Hong Kong.
Religious / civic / cultural context
Commemorates the birth of Siddhārtha Gautama (Śākyamuni Buddha) at Lumbini in roughly the 6th century BCE, drawing on the Mahayana tradition that arrived in the Korean peninsula via China in the 4th century CE and in Hong Kong through long-standing Chinese Buddhist sangha. The Korean and Hong Kong observances both center on the gwanbul / yuk-fat ritual of pouring sweet tea or scented water over a small standing Buddha image, re-enacting the legendary nine dragons that bathed the newborn Buddha. Civic framing emphasizes compassion, peace, and the multireligious balance of each society.
Date rule
Observed on the 8th day of the 4th month of the East Asian lunisolar calendar (sa-wol cho-pa-il in Korean, fat-yuet co-baat in Cantonese), so the Gregorian date drifts between late April and mid-May. South Korea and Hong Kong both compute the date from the same lunisolar reckoning each year, and Hong Kong applies a substitute-holiday rule if the date falls on a Sunday under the Holidays Ordinance.
Planning impact
Korean markets (KRX, KOSDAQ) and Hong Kong markets (HKEX) close on the gazetted day, and cross-border North Asia desks should plan for thin liquidity on the same calendar day. Because the date is lunisolar, finance and HR calendars must be rebuilt annually rather than templated. The Korean lantern festival weekend draws heavy domestic tourism to Seoul and Busan — hotel inventory tightens 7-10 days out. In Hong Kong, ferries to Lantau and Cheung Chau run at peak capacity; logistics windows shrink.
Observance mode by jurisdiction
Country-specific behavior
Only countries whose pattern departs from the headline observance rule are listed.
South Korea
Bucheonim osin nal (부처님 오신 날, 'the day the Buddha came'); gazetted under the Regulations on Public Holidays of Government Offices (gwangong-seo-ui gong-hyu-il-e gwan-han gyu-jeong). Designated under President Park Chung-hee in 1975.
Hong Kong
Fat Daan (佛誕); became a general holiday on the handover to mainland sovereignty in 1999 to replace a colonial-era holiday, and upgraded to a statutory holiday in 2022, meaning all employees (not just white-collar) receive paid leave.
Japan
Not observed on this slug; Japan uses Kanbutsu-e / Hanamatsuri on a fixed 8 April Gregorian date and it is not a national holiday.
Vietnam
Not on this slug; Phật Đản is observed by the Buddhist community but is not a Vietnamese state public holiday.
Sources
As a Buddhist lunisolar feast sitting in the South Korea calendar, Buddha's Birthday matters for planning because office, bank, and school closures stack on the same day. The next tracked occurrence is May 13, 2027 (Thursday), which controls long-weekend math for that year.
Buddha's Birthday also appears in other country calendars such as Hong Kong and South Korea. Recorded next dates include Hong Kong on May 13, 2027 and South Korea on May 13, 2027 — slight differences across borders are common because each country can apply weekend-substitution or regional-only rules to the same nominal holiday.
South Korea plans this holiday primarily around Asia/Seoul. Because Buddha's Birthday follows a lunar or lunisolar calendar, the Gregorian date moves significantly each year and statutory recognition often spans several days, so reading the official block is more useful than the headline date. Teams often line Buddha's Birthday up with Chuseok, Lunar New Year, and New Year's Day when blocking off the broader holiday window.
Holiday planning depth
The closest observed holidays before and after Buddha's Birthday in the South Koreacalendar show the local scheduling neighborhood for 2027.
Previous holiday
Children's Day
May 5, 2027 · Public
8 days before Buddha's Birthday; local label: 어린이날.
Next holiday
Memorial Day
June 6, 2027 · Public
24 days after Buddha's Birthday; local label: 현충일.
These are the closest holidays around Buddha's Birthday in the South Koreacalendar for 2027. They help separate this guide from holidays in the same season or religious/civic family.
Children's Day
May 5, 2027 · Public
8 days before Buddha's Birthday. Local label: 어린이날.
Memorial Day
June 6, 2027 · Public
24 days after Buddha's Birthday. Local label: 현충일.
Independence Movement Day
March 1, 2027 · Public
73 days before Buddha's Birthday. Local label: 3·1절.
Lunar New Year
February 9, 2027 · Public
93 days before Buddha's Birthday. Local label: 설날.
Lunar New Year
February 8, 2027 · Public
94 days before Buddha's Birthday. Local label: 설날.
Liberation Day
August 15, 2027 · Public
94 days after Buddha's Birthday. Local label: 광복절.
Buddha's Birthday appears in 2 country calendars in the current dataset.
Asia
2 countries
Buddha's Birthday reads differently across the 2 listed jurisdictions: a Buddhist lunisolar feast can carry one statutory weight in South Korea and another in neighboring countries that copied the date but kept different observance rules.
| Country | Next date | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Hong Kong | May 13, 2027 | Public |
| South Korea | May 13, 2027 | Public |
Related links are selected from the same country calendar first, with family matches such as Easter-cycle or lunisolar festivals preferred before nearby-date filler.
Chuseok
September 24, 2026 · Public
Curated country planning companion
Open curated guide
Lunar New Year
February 16, 2026 · Public
Curated country planning companion
Open curated guide
New Year's Day
January 1, 2026 · Public
Nearby in the country calendar
See 2026 calendar
Independence Movement Day
March 1, 2026 · Public
Nearby in the country calendar
See 2026 calendar
Children's Day
May 5, 2026 · Public
Nearby in the country calendar
See 2026 calendar
Yes — Buddha's Birthday is listed as a public holiday in South Korea on a nationwide basis.
In 2027, Buddha's Birthday in South Korea falls on May 13, 2027 (Thursday).
Buddha's Birthday follows a lunar or lunisolar calendar tradition, so the Gregorian date changes from year to year. In the tracked data window, the dates land on 2025: May 5, 2026: May 24, 2027: May 13. Because Buddha's Birthday follows a lunar or lunisolar calendar, the Gregorian date moves significantly each year and statutory recognition often spans several days, so reading the official block is more useful than the headline date.
Buddha's Birthday is listed as a public holiday in South Korea (nationwide), which usually means government offices, banks, and most schools close. It reads as a Buddhist lunisolar feast with origins tied to East Asia.
The local catalog name for South Korea is 부처님 오신 날; the English display name is Buddha's Birthday.
Buddha's Birthday appears in 2 country calendars in the current dataset, including Hong Kong, South Korea.
South Korea uses Asia/Seoul (UTC+09:00) for local planning.
Commemorates the birth of Siddhārtha Gautama (Śākyamuni Buddha) at Lumbini in roughly the 6th century BCE, drawing on the Mahayana tradition that arrived in the Korean peninsula via China in the 4th century CE and in Hong Kong through long-standing Chinese Buddhist sangha. The Korean and Hong Kong observances both center on the gwanbul / yuk-fat ritual of pouring sweet tea or scented water over a small standing Buddha image, re-enacting the legendary nine dragons that bathed the newborn Buddha. Civic framing emphasizes compassion, peace, and the multireligious balance of each society. Korean markets (KRX, KOSDAQ) and Hong Kong markets (HKEX) close on the gazetted day, and cross-border North Asia desks should plan for thin liquidity on the same calendar day. Because the date is lunisolar, finance and HR calendars must be rebuilt annually rather than templated. The Korean lantern festival weekend draws heavy domestic tourism to Seoul and Busan — hotel inventory tightens 7-10 days out. In Hong Kong, ferries to Lantau and Cheung Chau run at peak capacity; logistics windows shrink.
In South Korea, Buddha's Birthday and Christmas Day are the two statutory holidays of explicitly religious origin — together they encode the country's roughly balanced Buddhist-Christian demographic in public-holiday law. In Hong Kong, the slug sits in the late-April / early-May cluster alongside Ching Ming Festival (early April), Labour Day (1 May), and Tuen Ng / Dragon Boat (June), forming a series of frequently long weekends in Q2. The slug is deliberately distinct from Japan's Hanamatsuri because Japan fixes the date to Gregorian 8 April rather than the lunisolar reckoning used by Korea and Hong Kong.
Buddha's Birthday is often compared with Chuseok, Lunar New Year, New Year's Day on the South Korea calendar.