Malaysia Long Weekends 2026 and 2027 Travel Plan: Where to Go and Stay?

Eleven. Section 60D(1) of the Employment Act 1955 gives every employee eleven paid gazetted public holidays a year, and since the 2022 amendment took effect on 1 January 2023 that covers every employee on a contract of service whatever they earn.

Of those eleven, five are compulsory: National Day, the birthday of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, the birthday of the Ruler or Yang di-Pertua Negeri of the state where you work (or Federal Territory Day if you work in a Federal Territory), Labour Day and Malaysia Day. Your employer chooses the other six from your state’s gazetted list.

So a state list of seventeen dates is not seventeen days off. Check which six your employer has picked before you book anything, because that choice is what decides whether a given long weekend exists for you.

Because the law does. The third of the five compulsory holidays is the birthday of the Ruler of the state where you work, so your state is written into your entitlement rather than being a presentational detail.

It also changes the calendar in bigger ways. Sarawak does not gazette Deepavali at all. Sabah gazettes Christmas Eve. Kelantan gazettes the Day of Arafah and a second day of Hari Raya Haji that nobody else on this page gets, and only one day of Chinese New Year where the others get two.

Yes, and it is the single biggest thing this page exists to show. Kedah, Kelantan and Terengganu work Sunday to Thursday and rest on Friday and Saturday. Every other state and federal territory rests on Saturday and Sunday.

Johor used to as well, and reverted to a Saturday and Sunday weekend on 1 January 2025.

This changes what a long weekend even is. A holiday on a Monday gives most of Malaysia a three-day break and gives a Kelantan worker a single day off with a working Sunday in front of it. A holiday on a Sunday is worth nothing in Kuala Lumpur beyond its substitute Monday, and is worth a whole extra day in Kota Bharu, where Sunday is a working day.

It depends where you are, and the rule is narrower than most people think. Section 3 of the Holidays Act 1951 says that if a public holiday falls on the weekly holiday, the following day becomes a public holiday, and if that day is already one, the day after that.

Section 2 defines the weekly holiday as Sunday, or Friday in the states that observe Friday. Saturday is not the weekly holiday anywhere, so a Saturday public holiday is never moved. Labour Day on Saturday 1 May 2027 and Christmas Day on Saturday 25 December 2027 both buy nothing.

The rule also chains, which is why Awal Muharram on Sunday 6 June 2027 moves past the Agong’s birthday on the Monday and lands on Tuesday 8 June.

One important limit. Section 1(2) says the Act applies to the states of Peninsular Malaysia only. Sabah and Sarawak legislate their own holidays, so this page does not assume a substitute day for them and charges it as leave instead. If your employer grants one, you are better off than the numbers here.

On the biggest window of the year, Kelantan, and it is not close. Hari Raya Haji falls on Monday 17 May 2027 and Wesak Day on Thursday 20 May. The same nine days off cost a Kelantan worker one leave day and a Kuala Lumpur worker three.

Kelantan gazettes the Day of Arafah on the Sunday and a second day of Hari Raya Haji on the Tuesday, and its Friday and Saturday weekend closes the run at both ends.

It goes the other way at Christmas. Christmas Day and New Year’s Day both fall on a Friday, which is already Kelantan’s weekend, and Kelantan does not gazette New Year at all, so the identical ten-day trip costs six leave days there against four everywhere else on this page.

Because Sarawak is the one Malaysian state that does not gazette Deepavali. The page prices the same three nights from Kuching so the comparison is a real one, and charges the day it actually costs a Sarawak reader.

Sarawak gets its own back in June. Gawai Dayak falls on 1 and 2 June 2027, which nobody else on this page has, and three leave days around it reach a ten-day break.

The fixed ones are. The Islamic dates and Deepavali are not, and the gazette says so itself: Hari Raya Puasa, Hari Raya Qurban, Awal Ramadan and Deepavali are all published as subject to change, because they are settled by moon sighting. Those dates are marked with a * in the table above.

State dates move too, and more than people expect. The Sabah Governor’s birthday has been observed in October, in March, in April and in May across the last four years. Malaysian public holidays are announced rather than calculated, so check your own state’s gazette before you commit to leave.

It depends enormously on which state you are in, and this is the part of the page that surprises people. Kuala Lumpur publishes scheduled service on 52 of the routes checked for this guide. Kota Bharu publishes three.

Penang publishes 19, Kota Kinabalu 16 and Kuching 9. That is why the fare list changes length as well as price when you switch state, and why the distance filter disappears on the thinner gateways: with everything inside an hour there is nothing for it to filter.

Some of them, and the widget says which, but treat that as a starting point rather than a promise. Cancellation terms are filed by the property and change without notice, and Wego’s own refundable fields do not always agree with the rate they describe.

Confirm the cancellation policy on the property page before you book, and again on your confirmation email. Rates here are whole-booking totals for two adults in one room on the dates named, captured when this page was built.

Because it is a live snapshot of the cheapest seat on those exact dates, not an average. Short ASEAN routes out of Malaysia swing hard with demand, and a single carrier releasing seats will sit well under everything else in the same list.

Every price here is a from figure for one adult, return, found at the time this page was built. Tap any row to see what it actually costs today.