NRM Liberation Day

NRM Liberation Day marks January 26, 1986, when the National Resistance Army captured Kampala after the five-year Bush War and the National Resistance Movement took power. The war followed Uganda's disputed 1980 election and years of dictatorship and armed rule; it caused immense civilian suffering, especially in the Luweero Triangle, where government forces committed mass abuses and communities bore displacement, killing and destruction.

The state presents 1986 as a liberation and the beginning of reconstruction and relative stability. That official narrative is politically consequential rather than neutral: the NRM and Yoweri Museveni have remained in power for four decades, and rights organisations and opposition voices also examine political dominance, repression and abuses during and after the war. The holiday can honour sacrifice without erasing contested memories or treating every Ugandan's experience as identical.

NRM Liberation Day appears on Uganda's official annual calendars and was observed as a public holiday in 2026, but it is not named in the current Schedule 2 text of the Public Holidays Act. Its operational status rests on government calendar and declaration practice rather than the Schedule itself; users should verify each year's official notice. No automatic weekend substitute follows from the Act.