Laylat al-Qadr

Laylat al-Qadr, the Night of Power, commemorates the beginning of the Qur’an’s revelation to Prophet Muhammad. It is traditionally sought in the final ten nights of Ramadan, and Bangladesh’s annual public calendar commonly designates a working-day holiday around the twenty-seventh night. The evening combines intense private devotion with collective worship in mosques.

For many families, the public holiday creates room to remain awake for prayer, recitation and reflection. The date is not a licence to treat every religious practice as identical: local mosque programmes and individual observance vary. It is included as a public holiday because the government calendar provides a designated closure, but the precise civil date follows the lunar calendar and must be confirmed annually.

The 2026 government and banking calendars identify Tuesday, March 17 as Shab-e-Qadr, the local official-calendar title for Laylat al-Qadr. It is leave under executive order, and in 2026 it also opens a longer government Eid break after an additional March 18 holiday was later declared. Scheduled banks close on March 17 under Bangladesh Bank's circular. Private-sector workers do not automatically receive the entire government sequence: employers designate statutory paid festival holidays under the Labour Act.