Eid al-Fitr

Eid al-Fitr means the festival of breaking the fast and begins the Islamic month of Shawwal after Ramadan. The religious day brings the month-long discipline of dawn-to-sunset fasting to a close through thanksgiving, communal prayer and charity. Guinea’s public vocabulary also uses Korité, a familiar West African name, while the legal decree calls it Aïd El Fitr and defines it as the feast marking Ramadan’s end.

The feast moves about eleven days earlier through the Gregorian calendar in most years because the Islamic calendar is lunar. Guinea’s religious authorities announce the national date after the relevant moon determination. The Presidency and Prime Minister both documented Eid al-Fitr on Friday, March 20 in 2026, including major prayer gatherings in Conakry; later years deliberately return no projected date in this calendar until confirmed.

Decree D/2022/0526 lists Eid al-Fitr among Guinea’s legal, non-working and paid holidays across the public, private and mixed sectors. Work is suspended except in services that cannot stop. Labour Code Articles 222.6–222.7 preserve ordinary pay, prohibit recovery of the lost hours and require additional pay for covered employees who work: the hourly rate plus 60% by day or plus 100% by night. Article 2 of the 2022 decree is unusually specific: if Independence Day, New Year’s Day or Eid al-Fitr coincides with a non-working day, the next working day is also legal, non-working and paid. The calendar therefore applies a Monday substitute when this holiday falls on the Labour Code’s ordinary Sunday rest day; it does not invent a substitute in other circumstances.