Nicaragua Holidays 2026: Complete List, Pay Rules, and Employer Compliance Guide

Nicaragua’s Código del Trabajo mandates 14 paid national holidays in 2026, plus two Managua-only local holidays declared each year by the Ministerio del Trabajo. Employers who miscalculate the Art. 62 holiday surcharge risk MITRAB fines and retroactive INSS assessments. This guide lists every 2026 date, the pay formula, and a coverage-planning framework.

What Are Nicaragua’s National Holidays in 2026?

Which Nicaragua Holidays Are Civic and Patriotic?

Ten of Nicaragua’s 14 national holidays mark civic, patriotic, or cultural occasions.

• January 1 (Thursday), New Year’s Day: Most companies remain closed through January 2, and many employees extend vacation through the first week.
• January 18 (Sunday), Rubén Darío’s Birth Anniversary: Added by Ley 1272 in honor of the poet Rubén Darío. It falls on a Sunday in 2026.
• February 2 (Monday), National Day of Reconciliation and Peace: Added by Ley 1272 in honor of Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo. It is the only one of the four new dates that falls on a business day in 2026.
• February 21 (Saturday), Augusto C. Sandino Tribute Day: Added by Ley 1272 in tribute to General Augusto C. Sandino.
• May 1 (Friday), International Workers’ Day: US teams work May 1, so coverage that day falls entirely to staff outside Nicaragua. Expect marches and union events in Managua, León, and Masaya.
• May 30 (Saturday), Nicaraguan Mothers’ Day: Added by Ley 1118 in 2022. Nicaragua fixes Mothers’ Day to May 30 every year.
• July 19 (Sunday), Sandinista Revolution Day: Marks the 1979 triumph over the Somoza regime.
• September 14 (Monday), Battle of San Jacinto: Commemorates the 1856 defeat of William Walker’s filibuster forces. Combined with September 15 on Tuesday, this creates a two-day block many employees extend with adjacent vacation.
• September 15 (Tuesday), Independence Day: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua all observe September 15, so a team spread across those five countries loses the date everywhere. Belize (September 21) and Panama (November 28) mark independence on other dates and stay available.
• November 8 (Sunday), Carlos Fonseca Amador Tribute Day: Added by Ley 1272 in honor of Carlos Fonseca Amador.

Which Nicaragua Holidays Are Religious?

Four of the 14 national holidays are religious observances: Holy Thursday, Good Friday, La Purísima, and Christmas Day.

• Holy Thursday (April 2) and Good Friday (April 3): The only movable dates, shifting each year with the Easter calculation. Easter Sunday falls on April 5 in 2026. Only Thursday and Friday carry legal holiday status, but productivity commonly drops across the full Semana Santa week as families travel to Pacific coastal towns and highland destinations. Treat the preceding Monday through Wednesday as a reduced-output period when planning sprints.
• La Purísima (December 8, Tuesday): “La Gritería” on December 7 evening often shortens the effective workday. December 7 falls on a Monday in 2026, and many employees request it as vacation.
• Christmas Day (December 25, Friday): Naturally extends into a three-day weekend. The period from December 24 through January 1 operates as a de facto shutdown across most of the private sector.

What Are Managua’s Local Santo Domingo Holidays?

August 1 and August 10 are local paid days off under Art. 67, and only employers in the municipality of Managua must observe them. MITRAB declares them each year. The 2026 communiqué, issued by the Minister of Labour in Managua on 24 July 2026, cites Art. 67 and declares paid rest on Saturday 1 August and Monday 10 August for workers and employers of the municipality of Managua, with a return to ordinary work on Monday 3 August and Tuesday 11 August. It excepts activities that cannot be interrupted under Art. 69. Companies headquartered in León, Granada, Estelí, Matagalpa, or any other department carry zero obligation.

The festival window around Managua’s largest cultural event commonly brings traffic disruption and a citywide business slowdown. Because most of Nicaragua’s formal tech and BPO employers are based in Managua, they typically treat both dates as paid holidays and apply the Art. 62 surcharge to anyone required to work.

How Does Nicaragua’s Código del Trabajo Define Public Holidays?

Three articles in Nicaragua’s Código del Trabajo (Law No. 185, Arts. 66-68) set every employer’s holiday obligation, and the list in Art. 66 has been amended twice since 2022. Ley 1118 added May 30 as Nicaraguan Mothers’ Day (La Gaceta, Diario Oficial No. 92, 20 May 2022). Ley 1272 added January 18, February 2, February 21, and November 8 (La Gaceta, Diario Oficial No. 11, 20 January 2026), taking the national total to 14. MITRAB enforces these provisions across public and private sectors, and collective bargaining agreements can exceed these minimums but cannot reduce them.

What Is Art. 66’s Closed List of Fourteen Holidays?

Art. 66 names 14 national holidays as mandatory paid rest days (“feriados nacionales obligatorios con derecho a descanso y salario”), and employers cannot add, swap, or drop a date from that list. Only the National Assembly can change it, which is what Ley 1118 and Ley 1272 did. Nicaragua’s 14 statutory national holidays sit above Mexico’s seven and Argentina’s 16, and below Colombia’s 19, part of the wide variation in public holidays across Latin America.

What Does Art. 67 Say About Local Paid Holidays?

Art. 67 is the separate authority for local paid days off (asuetos remunerados), which is where Managua’s two Santo Domingo dates come from. It creates a two-tier system: 14 national holidays that apply everywhere under Art. 66, plus local dates that bind only employers in the municipality that observes them. MITRAB issues the Managua declaration each year.

What Does Art. 68 Require When a Holiday Falls on the Weekly Rest Day?

Art. 68 reads: “Si algún día feriado nacional coincide con el séptimo día, éste será compensado, y al trabajador que labore se le remunerará como día extraordinario de trabajo.” A national holiday that lands on the weekly rest day is compensated, and an employee who works it is paid as an extraordinary day of work.

Art. 62 sets what “extraordinary” costs: extraordinary hours and hours the employee works on a rest day are paid at 100% more than the rate stipulated for the normal workday. The premium applies to every employee, with no analogue to the US FLSA’s exempt and non-exempt split, and it is taxable income subject to INSS and IR withholding. The full worked calculation appears in the pay-calculation section below.

Nicaragua’s Art. 62 surcharge for employees who work a statutory holiday.

What Happens When a Nicaragua Holiday Falls on a Weekend in 2026?

Nicaragua does not shift holidays to Mondays the way Colombia’s Ley Emiliani does. The date stays where the calendar puts it, and Art. 68 governs the overlap: a national holiday that coincides with the weekly rest day (séptimo día) is compensated, and an employee who works it is paid as an extraordinary day.

Five of the 14 national holidays fall on a weekend in 2026, plus one of the two Managua dates.

The pay obligation attaches to the date. An employee who logs hours on a statutory holiday is owed the Art. 62 surcharge whether or not the date also overlaps a rest day.

Can Employers Offer Bridge Days Without Creating a Legal Entitlement?

Arts. 66-68 set a floor. They enumerate the mandatory dates, the local asueto power, and the rest-day overlap rule, and none of the three addresses voluntary extra days off. December 8 on a Tuesday makes the preceding Monday, December 7, the obvious candidate in 2026, and February 2 on a Monday already produces a three-day weekend without any employer action.

Whether a bridge day repeated year after year hardens into an acquired right (derecho adquirido) is a question the code text does not answer. Confirm the position with Nicaraguan counsel before making a voluntary day recurring, state in writing each year that the day is granted at the employer’s discretion, and keep discretionary language in the employment contract itself.

How Do You Calculate Holiday Pay Under Arts. 66-68?

Nicaragua treats every month as a 30-day unit for payroll math, and that divisor governs holiday pay, overtime, severance, and INSS calculations alike.

Salaried employees who rest on the holiday receive normal pay with no adjustment, since the holiday pay is already embedded in the monthly salary. Daily-rate and hourly workers must still be paid for the holiday even though no work is performed, per Art. 66’s “con derecho a descanso y salario” guarantee.

Employees who work on the holiday, Art. 62 surcharge breakdown:

Arts. 62, 66 and 68 do not state whether the day’s ordinary salary, already owed because Art. 66 makes the holiday a paid rest day, is additional to that surcharge. Confirm the treatment with Nicaraguan counsel or your EOR provider before running payroll for a worked holiday, because the two readings differ by a full day’s wage.

How Do Overtime and Holiday Premiums Stack?

Art. 62 covers both extraordinary hours and hours worked on a rest day at the same rate: 100% more than the ordinary rate. Art. 58 caps total extraordinary work at three hours per day, limiting the maximum holiday workday to 11 hours.

A developer earning $3,000/month ($100/day, $12.50/hour) who works 10 hours on May 1 is paid $25 per hour for all 10, the eight holiday hours and the two extraordinary hours alike, for $250. The open question above, whether the paid rest day’s ordinary salary sits on top of that, applies here as well.

Both premiums constitute taxable income. Employers must include them in the INSS monthly reporting form, and failing to report premium pay as insurable earnings triggers retroactive INSS assessments. Per INSS’s employer contribution schedule and the Código del Trabajo’s aguinaldo (Art. 93), vacation, and severance provisions, the total employer burden reaches approximately 49.5% on top of base salary for an employer with 50 or more workers: INSS at 22.5%, INATEC at 2%, aguinaldo at 8.33%, vacation at 8.33%, and severance indemnity at 8.33%. INSS publishes a lower employer rate of 21.5% for employers with fewer than 50 workers, which brings the same total to roughly 48.5%. Most nearshore teams sit in the smaller band. Holiday premium pay earned must also be included in the aguinaldo calculation base.

Employer Burden Breakdown: Nicaragua’s employer cost above base salary, by mandatory contribution and accrual, at both INSS employer rates.

How Do You Build a 2026 Coverage Plan Around Nicaragua Holidays?

Nicaraguan staff are off for seven national-holiday business days in 2026, while nine US federal holidays fall on days when Nicaraguan engineers are fully available. That count is 14 statutory holidays minus five that fall on a weekend (January 18, February 21, May 30, July 19, November 8) minus two shared with the US (January 1, December 25); Managua teams add August 10 as an eighth gap day. Eight of the nine US dates are usable in practice, because US stakeholders are unreachable on Thanksgiving. Companies scaling engineering teams in Nicaragua can offset most gap days by routing backlog work to those reverse-gap days.

Which 2026 Holiday Clusters Have the Highest Impact?

Four windows concentrate most of the year’s coverage risk: Holy Week, the September patriotic block, the Santo Domingo festival, and the December season.

How Do You Communicate the Calendar and Configure Systems?

Six steps turn the 2026 calendar into a working coverage plan.

1. Distribute the finalized Nicaragua and US holiday calendar to all project managers and payroll by Q4 of the prior year.
2. Tag each holiday in project management tools (Jira, Asana) with coverage-gap alerts.
3. Notify external clients of reduced-capacity dates at least 30 days in advance.
4. Use reverse-gap days, US holidays when Nicaragua works, for backlog and tech debt.
5. For multi-country LATAM teams, rotate coverage: Mexican teams cover Nicaragua’s September 14-15; Nicaraguan teams cover Mexico’s Revolution Day.
6. Configure payroll systems with separate holiday codes for the 14 national holidays versus the two Managua-local holidays, with auto-calculation of the Art. 62 surcharge and proper INSS/IR withholding.

Ask your EOR or payroll provider to show, in writing, how its Nicaragua module handles the four dates Ley 1272 added in January 2026 and how it recalculates the movable Holy Week dates each year.

Frequently Asked Questions About Nicaragua Holidays

These are the six questions US HR and finance teams ask most often about Nicaragua’s holiday rules.

Are Public Holidays Paid for Employees on Probation?

Yes. Art. 66 establishes holiday rights for every employee without regard to tenure or probationary status. A developer who has completed a single day of employment when a holiday arrives receives the same holiday pay and the same premium treatment as a 10-year employee.

Can Employers Substitute a Holiday for a Different Day Off?

No. Art. 66’s list is closed, and employers cannot unilaterally substitute or eliminate days. Only the National Assembly can change the list, which it did through Ley 1118 in 2022 and Ley 1272 in January 2026. Art. 68 provides the one built-in adjustment: a national holiday that coincides with the weekly rest day is compensated.

How Do Holidays Affect the Aguinaldo Calculation?

Holidays do not reduce the aguinaldo. Premium pay earned for working on holidays is considered part of ordinary remuneration and must be included in the calculation base, increasing the total bonus amount.

Do Managua’s Local Holidays Apply to Employees Outside the Capital?

No. August 1 and August 10 are Art. 67 local asuetos and apply only to employers with a legal domicile or facility inside the municipality of Managua. The 2026 MITRAB communiqué is addressed to workers and employers of that municipality. Employees working from León, Granada, Estelí, or Matagalpa are not entitled to these two dates as paid rest.

What Happens if a Company Miscalculates or Skips the Holiday Premium?

The employer owes retroactive premium pay plus exposure to MITRAB fines, and the underpayment compounds across a full workforce. The January 2026 addition of four dates makes 2026 a year in which stale payroll calendars produce errors on days that were ordinary working days in 2025.

Do Nicaragua’s Holiday Rules Cover Independent Contractors?

No. The Código del Trabajo’s holiday provisions apply to employees under a labor relationship. A contractor under a services agreement falls outside them. Companies that classify Nicaraguan workers as contractors to avoid holiday pay take on misclassification risk that an employer-of-record structure avoids.

How Do You Ensure Full Compliance Without a Local Entity in Nicaragua?

MITRAB’s labor inspectorate audits foreign-owned companies, and fines scale with the number of affected employees. The four holidays Ley 1272 added in January 2026 widen the exposure for any employer still running a 2025 payroll calendar.

A mid-level Nicaraguan software engineer typically costs 40-60% less than a comparable US hire, in line with NBS’s published savings range by role, but that advantage narrows quickly if a compliance failure triggers retroactive assessments. An Employer of Record in Latin America absorbs this complexity, managing premium calculations, INSS reporting, and the full employer burden rate automatically.

Ready to Audit Your Nicaragua Holiday Compliance?

NBS reviews your Nicaragua holiday calendar, payroll codes, and premium configuration against the current Código del Trabajo and MITRAB communiqués, at no cost.

Get a free Nicaragua holiday compliance audit →