Does Indonesia have Carnival?
Not observed here
Indonesia has no pre-Lent carnival. It does not appear on the national holiday list — the joint decree for 2026 sets seventeen national holidays plus eight collective leave days, and no carnival is among them. Yet the word *karnaval* is very much alive in Indonesia, pointing at something else: the neighbourhood parades around Independence Day on 17 August, and the regional fashion carnivals. The parade form is everywhere; the reason for its date — the fast that was supposed to follow — never came with it.
What is this topic?
Carnival is not a public holiday in Brazil. It is a *ponto facultativo* — a discretionary day off that the management ministry designates by decree each year for federal offices, with Ash Wednesday running only until two in the afternoon. The largest festival on earth has no statutory holiday status in its own country; it rests on an administrative order reissued every year. The United States turned it into a Louisiana state holiday, Japan moved it to August and dropped the fast, and Goa kept the form left behind by Portuguese rule.
Sources and dates
Dates follow local time zones, calendars, and official notices. Check the source when a date is estimated or locally variable.