🌕 Chuseok 2026: Sep 24 (Thu) – Sep 27 (Sun)

Q: What actually closes

Read this carefully. 518 places saying "closed for the holiday" does not mean the other 6,102 are open. Most simply did not say. Many Korean businesses decide holiday hours about a week ahead and put a paper note on the door. If one specific place matters to you, call it.

Q: The Monday-after trap

Sep 28 (Mon) is a Monday. Monday is the single most common closing day in Korea — 1,107 restaurants (17%) and 319 cafés (16%) in our data close every Monday. So "we'll just go after the holiday" walks straight into it. The first fully normal day is the Tuesday.

Q: Traditional markets, day by day

That is the rule, not a promise. Many markets close on the holiday itself, and some run a larger market in the days before Chuseok instead. Treat these as candidates and confirm locally before travelling.

Chuseok is Korea's biggest holiday. Most of the country travels to their hometown on the same days. If a friend is coming to Korea around then, this is the page to send them — it answers the question everyone living here gets asked every year: "will anything be open?"

⚠️ The short version

Official holidays are Sep 24 (Thu) – Sep 26 (Sat). Sep 27 (Sun) is a Sunday, so it is effectively a four-day break — and then Sep 28 (Mon) is a Monday, the most common weekly closing day in Korea. Plan around both, not just the holiday.

What actually closes

We track opening hours for 6,620 restaurants and 2,018 cafés registered in Korea Tourism Organization data. Here is what they say themselves:

What the listing says	Restaurants	Cafés
Says it closes for Chuseok / Lunar New Year	518	49
Says it is open year-round (연중무휴)	3,307	1,299
Closes every Monday	1,107	319

Read this carefully. 518 places saying "closed for the holiday" does not mean the other 6,102 are open. Most simply did not say. Many Korean businesses decide holiday hours about a week ahead and put a paper note on the door. If one specific place matters to you, call it.

The Monday-after trap

Sep 28 (Mon) is a Monday. Monday is the single most common closing day in Korea — 1,107 restaurants (17%) and 319 cafés (16%) in our data close every Monday. So "we'll just go after the holiday" walks straight into it. The first fully normal day is the Tuesday.

Full breakdown by weekday →

How it differs from the holiday you may know

Chuseok falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, so the date moves every year. Korea makes it a three-day public holiday — the day before, the day itself, and the day after. If you know American Thanksgiving, the feel is similar: family, food, and the entire country travelling at once. The difference is that Korea is small and the travel is compressed into those few days, which is why intercity buses, trains and highways fill up and why so many small businesses simply shut.

What is open

14 festivals are running across the holiday. Festivals are one of the few things that stay open on Chuseok — many are timed for it.

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Traditional markets, day by day

Korea's five-day markets (오일장) open on a fixed cycle of date endings, so we can say which ones fall on each holiday day. Of the 130 markets whose cycle we know:

Sep 24 (Thu)

28 markets

Sep 25 (Fri)

21 markets

Sep 26 (Sat)

25 markets

Sep 27 (Sun)

27 markets

That is the rule, not a promise. Many markets close on the holiday itself, and some run a larger market in the days before Chuseok instead. Treat these as candidates and confirm locally before travelling.

All five-day markets →

What this page does not cover

We only write what our own data supports. Visas and K-ETA, transport cards, SIM cards and flight prices are not our data, so we do not cover them. Plenty of sites do — and getting those wrong would cost you more than our staying quiet.

Source: Korea Tourism Organization public data (opening hours, festivals, traditional markets) and the Korean government public-holiday calendar. Opening-hours figures are counted from 6,620 restaurants and 2,018 cafés on 2026-09-10. Businesses change holiday hours at short notice — always confirm before travelling.

🚪 What closes, all year 🗓️ When to go ♿ Barrier-free 🔎 Festivals