Ramadan 2027 Guide: Dates, Fasting Hours & Eid Forecast

When is Ramadan 2027?

Ramadan 2027 is expected to begin on Monday, 8 February 2027, and end on Monday, 8 March 2027, with Eid al-Fitr on Tuesday, 9 March 2027. The Ramadan 2027 date marks the start of the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar (1448 AH) and will be observed by Muslims worldwide for 29 days, according to Saudi Arabia’s Umm al-Qura calendar.

Final Ramadan 2027 dates depend on the sighting of the crescent moon after sunset on Sunday, 7 February 2027 (29 Sha’ban 1448). Different countries may begin on 8 or 9 February 2027 depending on local moon-sighting rules — see the country-by-country table below.

Ramadan 2027 dates by country

These are astronomical forecasts from regional moon-sighting committees (Umm al-Qura, UAE Astronomy Centre, U.S. Naval Observatory, and others). Actual start and end dates will be confirmed locally upon sighting the crescent moon.

 

Ramadan 2027 calendar (1448 AH)

The projected day-by-day calendar for Ramadan 1448 AH, based on the Umm al-Qura calendar, is as follows:

If you are planning ahead or want to compare dates year-on-year, our guide to Ramadan 2026 shows how the dates differ.

Ramadan moon-sighting

Why do calendars differ by a day? Local sighting requires testimony from within a country’s borders; regional sighting accepts a positive report from a wider zone (for example, the Arabian Peninsula or GCC); global sighting treats any verified sighting worldwide as valid.

Astronomical calculation calendars, such as Saudi Arabia’s Umm al-Qura or Türkiye’s Diyanet, use precise moon-set algorithms and publish dates years in advance. Major bodies that adjudicate include the Majlis Ulama Indonesia (MUI), the South African National Hilaal Committee, Moonsighting.com’s global panel, and the Islamic Crescents’ Observation Project (ICOP). For Ramadan 1448, the crescent will be searched for after sunset on Sunday, 7 February 2027 (29 Sha’ban).

Ramadan 2027 fasting hours

Fasting hours vary by geography and season. The fast begins at dawn (Fajr) and ends at sunset (Maghrib), with exact timings depending on latitude and time of year. Because Ramadan 2027 falls in February and early March — winter in the Northern Hemisphere — most Muslims worldwide will fast between 11 and 15 hours a day, among the shorter Ramadans of the decade.

The spread between the shortest and longest fasts is at its widest in years like 2027. Some examples:

• Reykjavik, Iceland, sees one of the shortest fasts, at roughly 10 to 11 hours on the first day of Ramadan.
• Southern-hemisphere cities in late summer face the longest spans. Buenos Aires, Argentina, will fast close to 14 to 15 hours.
• Most cities in the Islamic heartlands sit in between: Makkah around 12 hours 40 minutes, Dubai around 12 hours 15 minutes, Jakarta around 13 hours, and Johannesburg close to 13 hours 45 minutes.

Daylight lengthens by about 25 to 30 minutes over the month, so the last days of fasting will be noticeably longer than the first. Even so, 2027 offers comfortably moderate fasts compared with the peak-summer Ramadans of the past decade.

How Ramadan reshapes daily life

For a month, the clock that runs most of the Muslim world tilts a few degrees off its usual axis. Office hours shrink, traffic inverts, meal times invert with it, and a quiet city at 3 PM can be the same city packed shoulder-to-shoulder at 11 PM. If you are visiting a Muslim-majority destination during Ramadan 2027, these are the shifts that will affect your day.

Legally shortened working hours

Several Muslim-majority countries codify Ramadan hour reductions into law. In the UAE, under Federal Decree Law No. 33 of 2021, private sector employees — Muslim and non-Muslim alike — must have daily working hours cut by two, taking a standard eight-hour day down to six without a cut in pay. Federal government staff typically work 09:00 to 14:30 Monday to Thursday and 09:00 to 12:00 on Fridays. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Oman follow similar models, though the specifics vary by sector and by free zone (DIFC and ADGM apply their own rules).

Public transport reruns its timetable

Metros and buses in Dubai, Doha, Riyadh and Jakarta typically extend service past midnight to accommodate late-night shopping and Taraweeh prayer crowds, then drop back to a light schedule during afternoon heat. Check the relevant RTA, Doha Metro, SAPTCO or TransJakarta apps before you head out — the Ramadan timetable is genuinely different from the standard one, not a cosmetic adjustment.

Meal timing flips the day

The two fixed anchors of the Ramadan day are suhoor, the pre-dawn meal eaten before Fajr, and iftar, the fast-breaking meal at Maghrib. Between them sit roughly 12 to 13 hours of fasting for most of the Islamic heartlands in 2027. Families and hotels will often pre-plate iftar so the first mouthful — traditionally a date and a sip of water — lands the moment the adhan sounds. Restaurants that cater to tourists may quietly serve non-fasters behind screens or in hotel-interior dining rooms during the day.

The pre-iftar rush

The 90 minutes before sunset is the single busiest window on the Ramadan clock. Grocery queues swell, home cooks finish the last of the dishes, and ride-hailing surge pricing spikes on apps like Careem, Uber, InDrive and Gojek. In cities like Cairo, Istanbul, Lahore and Dhaka, roads visibly empty out in the final 10 minutes as drivers sprint to make it home for the first bite. If you are a traveller, avoid scheduling taxis, flights or check-ins within this window — it is the worst hour of the day to be on the road.

The night reopens the city

After iftar and Isha, the second half of the Ramadan day begins. Shopping malls, Ramadan tents, dessert cafés and roadside food stalls run late, often past 01:00. Theme parks and museums in places like Dubai, Doha and Cairo shift their opening hours to start mid-afternoon and close around midnight. In the final ten nights, Taraweeh attendance at the Two Holy Mosques in Makkah and Madinah can easily exceed two million on a single night, with real-time crowd-control screens now directing worshippers to the least-congested entrances.

Traveller tip: Eating, drinking or smoking in public before sunset is generally considered inappropriate, and in some jurisdictions it carries a fine. Stick to hotel restaurants, screened cafés or your own room during the day, dress modestly around religious sites, and keep music low until after evening prayers.

Ramadan traditions around the world

What Ramadan looks like on the ground differs sharply from one country to the next. A Ramadan night in Java feels nothing like one in Old Delhi or central London. Here is a region-by-region look at the customs travellers are most likely to encounter during Ramadan 2027.

Türkiye: dawn drummers, mahya lights and the iftar cannon

The most distinctive sound of Ramadan in Türkiye is not the adhan — it is the sahur davulcusu, the dawn drummer. Tracing back to Ottoman times, these drummers walk neighbourhood streets in the pre-dawn hours beating a davul and reciting rhyming couplets (mani) to wake households for suhoor. The tradition survives in Istanbul, Bursa, Izmir and smaller Anatolian towns, though modern alarms now share the job.

After sunset, Istanbul’s skyline carries a second Ottoman inheritance: mahya, illuminated Qur’anic messages strung between the minarets of imperial mosques. First executed at the Sultan Ahmed (Blue) Mosque in the 17th century under Sultan Ahmed I, mahya once burned with oil lamps and now use LED bulbs; the greetings rotate from “Welcome” at the start of Ramadan to “Farewell” in the final nights. A ceremonial iftar cannon also fires daily from hilltops such as Çamlıca, a sound that once served as the official signal for breaking fast before radio and mobile phones took over.

Saudi Arabia: the scale of the Two Holy Mosques

No Ramadan tradition matches the physical scale of Makkah and Madinah. At the Masjid al-Haram, the Grand Mosque’s courtyards are unrolled with kilometre-long plastic mats each afternoon, and hundreds of thousands of worshippers break their fast on dates, laban and Zamzam water the moment the cannon fires. Taraweeh at both the Grand Mosque and the Prophet’s Mosque is performed in 10 rakats followed by 3 of Witr, and attendance peaks during the final ten nights — especially the 27th, widely associated with Laylat al-Qadr, when the Grand Mosque has received over four million worshippers across a single night in recent years. Saudi authorities now use IoT sensors and colour-coded digital boards at mosque gates to manage crowd density in real time.

The Gulf States: children, majlis nights and Garangao

On the 14th or 15th night of Ramadan, children across Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province dress up in traditional clothing and walk door to door singing for nuts, sweets and small gifts. In Qatar, the UAE and Bahrain, this is known as Garangao; in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province it is Gargean. The rest of Ramadan in the Gulf is organised around the majlis — evening gatherings hosted in tented sitting rooms, hotel ballrooms and private homes — and around late-night Ramadan tents where shisha, gahwa and Arabic sweets are served until suhoor.

Egypt: a fanoos tradition older than a millennium

The fanoos is the symbol most travellers associate with Ramadan in Egypt, and its story begins with a single night in 358 AH (969 CE). When the Fatimid caliph al-Mu’izz li-Din Allah arrived in Cairo during Ramadan, the city’s viceroy Gawhar al-Siqilli ordered residents to light the route. To shield the flames from wind, Cairenes mounted candles on wooden bases wrapped in palm and hide — the ancestor of today’s fanoos. A later Fatimid caliph, al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, made lanterns mandatory in every alley and in front of every shop and home. Centuries later, the streets of Old Cairo — Al-Muizz, Al-Azhar, Khan el-Khalili — still glow with hand-blown glass and tin lanterns, while Cairo’s iftar cannon continues to fire from the Citadel each evening.

Malaysia: the bubur lambuk pot at Masjid Jamek

In Kuala Lumpur’s Kampung Baru neighbourhood, one of the longest-running Ramadan traditions in Ramadan in Malaysia still plays out in a mosque basement. For roughly a century, volunteers at Masjid Jamek Kampung Baru have cooked bubur lambuk — a spiced rice porridge with beef, prawns, coconut milk and pandan — in giant cauldrons and distributed it free to anyone who shows up before iftar. The recipe is said to have come from a worshipper named Haji Said, whose version proved so popular that the mosque eventually adopted it as a communal dish. Elsewhere in Malaysia, the pasar Ramadan (Ramadan bazaars) take over streets like Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman, with hundreds of tented stalls selling kuih, satay, ayam percik, murtabak and air tebu in the late afternoon.

Indonesia: padusan, ngabuburit and the bedug drum

In Indonesia, Ramadan begins before Ramadan does. In the days leading up to the first fast, Javanese communities in Yogyakarta, Klaten and Semarang practise padusan, a ritual bathing in rivers, springs and public baths meant to purify body and soul before the month begins. Once Ramadan is underway, the hour before iftar is called ngabuburit — a window filled with strolls, kite-flying, and queues at kolak (palm-sugar banana compote) and gorengan stalls. The dominant sound of Indonesian Ramadan, though, is the bedug: a large wooden double-barrelled drum covered in buffalo hide, mounted in Javanese mosques and struck to mark suhoor, iftar and the takbiran processions on the night before Eid. The Eid exodus, mudik, is one of the largest annual movements of people in the world, with tens of millions travelling by car, train, ferry and plane to their home villages.

Pakistan: Ruet-e-Hilal, samosas and Chand Raat

Ramadan in Pakistan begins officially when the Central Ruet-e-Hilal Committee, the country’s statutory moon-sighting body, confirms the hilal. From that point on, the daily calendar becomes a sehri-to-iftar rhythm familiar to every household. Iftar in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad traditionally opens with dates and water, then moves quickly to pakoras, samosas, chana chaat, fruit chaat and cold glasses of Rooh Afza. In the final week, the streets of Lahore’s Anarkali and Karachi’s Tariq Road stay open deep into the night as families shop for clothes, bangles and henna — peaking on Chand Raat, the night the Eid moon is sighted, when salons, markets and dessert shops run nonstop until dawn.

India: Jama Masjid’s Mughal courtyards and Hyderabad’s haleem

Delhi’s Jama Masjid, commissioned by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan and completed in 1656, anchors one of the most atmospheric Ramadan experiences in Ramadan in India. The lanes radiating from the mosque — Matia Mahal, Chitli Qabar, Chawri Bazar — fill each evening with stalls serving nihari, seekh kebabs, shahi tukda and Sharbat-e-Mohabbat, a cool rose-and-watermelon drink particular to Old Delhi. Further south, Hyderabad’s Charminar quarter is synonymous with haleem — a slow-cooked wheat, lentil and meat stew traditionally prepared in wood-fired cauldrons at spots like Pista House and Shah Ghouse. The city’s haleem is protected under a Geographical Indication tag issued by the Indian government in 2010, and the queues outside the big stalls in the last ten nights wrap around the block.

The Western diaspora: Open Iftars from Trafalgar Square to Silverstone

In the UK, the Ramadan Tent Project (RTP), founded by SOAS students in 2013, has grown into the largest public iftar programme in the Western world. The 2026 edition closed with an Open Iftar at London‘s Trafalgar Square for around 3,000 guests, attended by Mayor of London Sadiq Khan; other 2026 venues included Silverstone Circuit, 22 Bishopsgate, the National Gallery, King’s College Cambridge, Glasgow City Chambers and the Library of Birmingham. RTP has previously staged iftars at Wembley Stadium, Windsor Castle, Shakespeare’s Globe and the V&A, and has fed more than a million people since 2013.

Comparable community initiatives run across the US and Canada, from city-hall iftars in New York, Chicago, Toronto and Ottawa to campus mosques opening their doors to non-Muslim neighbours. In Germany, “Offenes Iftar” events are held in Berlin and Frankfurt squares, often in partnership with local municipalities, emphasising interfaith dialogue rather than proselytising.

Bucket-list communal iftars worth travelling for

• Masjid al-Haram, Makkah: the largest iftar gathering on earth, with carpets unrolled across the mataf.
• Al-Azhar and Al-Muizz Street, Cairo: Fatimid-era streets eating on communal mats under glass fanoos.
• Sultanahmet Park, Istanbul: picnic iftars on the lawns between the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia.
• Masjid Jamek Kampung Baru, Kuala Lumpur: the century-old bubur lambuk queue before Maghrib.
• Souq Waqif, Doha: open-air communal tables followed by oud music in the lanes.
• Trafalgar Square, London: the Ramadan Tent Project finale, among the largest iftars in the Western world.
• Charminar, Hyderabad: haleem queues and lantern-lit lanes in the last ten nights.

Practical planning for travellers

In many parts of the world, Ramadan changes how cities move, eat and pause. Whether you are fasting or just passing through, understanding these shifts can help you move more mindfully and respectfully through local routines.

Etiquette cheat sheet for visitors

• Refrain from eating, drinking or smoking in public until sunset.
• Dress modestly, with shoulders and knees covered.
• Greet with “Ramadan Kareem”; avoid loud music until after Isha prayers.
• Ask before photographing people praying or breaking their fast.
• Respect shortened working hours and expect longer evening queues.

Business & banking hours matrix

Hours vary by city — always check local schedules before heading out.

Smart travel tips

• Shop at dawn or night: supermarkets are quietest right after Fajr and again after 22:00.
• Carry glucose tablets: helpful for diabetics observing the fast — consult a doctor first.
• Ask hotels for a suhoor box: many properties deliver a pre-dawn meal to your room when the buffet is closed.
• Use ride-hailing fare-split: surge pricing kicks in pre-iftar; sharing lowers cost.
• Download city transport apps: Dubai RTA, Jakarta MRT and Doha Metro show extended Ramadan hours.
• Book flights away from Eid: fares and airport crowds peak 1–2 days before and after Eid al-Fitr on Wego.

FAQ: Common Ramadan 2027 questions

When will Ramadan 2027 start and end?

Ramadan 2027 (1448 AH) is expected to start on Monday, 8 February 2027, and end on Monday, 8 March 2027, with Eid al-Fitr on Tuesday, 9 March 2027. Final dates depend on moon sighting.

Will Ramadan 2027 be 29 or 30 days?

According to Saudi Arabia’s Umm al-Qura calendar, Ramadan 1448 AH will be 29 days. Local moon-sighting committees make the final call on the 29th night.

Why do Ramadan start dates differ around the world?

Different countries follow different moon-sighting methods. Some require local visual confirmation, while others accept regional or global sightings. These choices affect when each community begins and ends the month of fasting, so dates can vary by a day.

What are the fasting hours during Ramadan 2027?

Because Ramadan 2027 falls in February and early March, fasts are relatively short. Most Muslims will fast between 11 and 15 hours, with the shortest fasts in high-latitude northern cities like Reykjavik and the longest in southern-hemisphere cities like Buenos Aires.

Can visitors eat on long-haul flights crossing Muslim-majority airspace?

Yes. Airlines follow origin-destination meal schedules, but consider neighbour courtesy if cabin lights are dimmed for fasting passengers.

Are theme parks and cultural sites open during Ramadan 2027?

Generally yes. Major attractions — from Istanbul’s Topkapı Palace and Cairo’s Egyptian Museum to Kuala Lumpur’s Sunway Lagoon and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art — adjust hours rather than close, often opening mid-afternoon and staying past midnight. Always confirm on the venue’s official website or local tourism board.

When is Eid al-Fitr 2027?

Eid al-Fitr 2027 is expected to fall on Tuesday, 9 March 2027, corresponding to 1 Shawwal 1448 AH. Some countries may observe it on 10 March 2027, depending on local moon sighting.

Sources

1. The Umm al-Qura Calendar of Saudi Arabia (Utrecht University)
2. Moonsighting.com — Ramadan 1448
3. Islamic Crescents’ Observation Project (ICOP)
4. Aladhan — Ramadan Calendar 2027
5. Hijria — Ramadan Calendar Saudi Arabia 1448
6. timeanddate.com — Holidays in Saudi Arabia 2027
7. Gulf News — UAE Ramadan working hours (Federal Decree Law 33 of 2021)
8. Daily Sabah — Mahya tradition in Istanbul
9. Fanous — origin and Fatimid-era history
10. Al Jazeera — Bubur lambuk at Masjid Jamek Kampung Baru
11. Bedug — Indonesian mosque drum
12. ICAR — Hyderabadi Haleem GI tag (2010)
13. Saudi Gazette — Taraweeh at the Two Holy Mosques
14. Ramadan Tent Project — Open Iftar 2026 venues
15. Zakat Foundation — When is Ramadan 2027?

Disclaimer: Wego strives to ensure all information presented in this article is accurate and up to date at the time of publication. Travel policies, prices, visa requirements, and conditions can change rapidly. We strongly recommend verifying critical details with official sources before making travel decisions. Wego does not accept liability for any inaccuracies, oversights, or changes that may occur after publication.