Singapore Year-End Holidays

Dates

How long it actually is

The year-end break is the longest by a wide margin, and the only one where the levels do not line up. For primary and secondary it starts on the Saturday after Term 4 ends and runs to 31 December: 21 November to 31 December in 2026, and 20 November to 31 December in 2027, per the MOE calendars for 2026 and 2027. That is 41 and 42 calendar days.

Junior colleges and Millennia Institute run a week longer into November, so in 2027 their break starts on 27 November against 20 November for primary and secondary. If you were planning to travel with children at both levels, that week is the constraint.

The longest version of all belongs to a student leaving Secondary 4. JC 1 and MI 1 do not begin Term 1 until early February, 3 February in 2027, so the gap between finishing secondary school and starting junior college is closer to ten weeks than six.

One more piece of the shape. The break ends on 31 December, but school does not resume the next morning. Term 1 of 2027 opens on Monday 4 January, so the first days of January belong to neither.

What it is good for, and what to skip

Six weeks holds a real trip, a set of camps, and several weeks of nothing without any of them crowding the others. It is the only break where the sensible unit of planning is the week rather than the day.

It is also the right window for planning the following year, because the following year's calendar already exists. MOE publishes the next school year's terms about five months before it starts: the 2027 calendar was published on 14 July 2026, and the current one is always on MOE's academic calendar page. By the time this break starts, the next June break's dates are already fixed, which makes December the moment to put in leave for it, before your colleagues do. The annual leave guide has the booking order.

What to skip: treating the whole six weeks as one season. The last fortnight of December is the busiest and most expensive stretch of the Singapore year, while the first fortnight of the break, the back half of November, is the quiet, cheap, under-used part. The same attraction on 25 November and on 27 December is a different day out at a different price. The year-end guide has the detail.

The childcare maths

This is the break with the biggest hole, and it is not close: 29 working days in 2026 and 30 in 2027, against 20 in June. If you have been planning leave and camps around June as the hard one, the arithmetic says otherwise.

Very little of it is covered for you. Christmas Day is the only gazetted public holiday inside the break, and it only removes a working day in years when 25 December falls on a weekday. It does in 2026, a Friday. It does not in 2027, a Saturday. New Year's Day sits outside the break entirely, on the far side of 31 December.

Two parents staggering their six days each cover 12 of the 29 or 30, which leaves most of it standing. This is where annual leave should go, and where student care earns its fee: it runs through the break, every primary school has a centre, and subsidies of up to 98 per cent are available to lower-income households under the Student Care Fee Assistance scheme, per MOE. Check the provider's operating dates over Christmas and New Year before assuming that last week is coverable at all. The childcare gap tool counts your year exactly.

What it costs, and when

December is the peak. On Changi's monthly passenger series at data.gov.sg, December was the busiest month of 2023, 2024 and 2025, at 5.81, 6.41 and 6.34 million passengers, ahead of June in every one of those years.

That is why the split matters more here than in any other break. The first two weeks, the back half of November, sit outside the peak completely, while the last two weeks sit inside it. A trip that departs in late November and returns before the middle of December is the same school break at a materially different price, and no other break offers that choice, because no other break is long enough to contain both a peak and a trough.

The same split runs through camps and tickets. The late-November and early-December weeks are the ones that still have places, and the last ten days of the break are the hardest to cover with anything paid. Check current prices and operating dates rather than assuming last year's, since holiday-period rates move.

National exams during this break (2026)

For exam households, the run-up lands inside this break.

Common questions

Plan it with

• Full 2026 MOE calendar and 2027 calendar
• How to shape six weeks
• Book next year's leave now and the leave optimizer
• Childcare gap: the 29 to 30 weekdays, and what is already covered
• Childcare leave, and when it lapses