Songkran: the dates that do not move, the week that does.

The dates, and why two different answers are both right

Ask when Songkran is and you get 13 to 15 April. Ask what Songkran is and you get an astronomical event. Both are true, and the gap between them explains a lot of the confusion online.

UNESCO's own entry for the festival describes Songkran as the sun’s annual passing into Aries, the first sign of the zodiac, marking the traditional start of the new year — a moment computed by Thai astrologers, not a fixed square on a calendar. UNESCO names those astrologers, along with schools, government agencies and the media, as the people who carry the astrological knowledge forward. The public holiday is a separate, civil decision: three days pinned to 13, 14 and 15 April so that the country can plan around them. So you can book an April flight two years out with confidence, and you should not expect the traditional reckoning to land on the same hour every year.

2026, confirmed from the primary list. The Bank of Thailand’s own holiday page for B.E. 2569, read on 7 October 2026, lists Monday 13, Tuesday 14 and Wednesday 15 April 2026 as Songkran Festival holidays for financial institutions and specialised financial institutions, with Chakri Memorial Day on Monday 6 April. No substitution day is attached to any of the three, because none of them fell on a weekend. The notification behind that list is 31/2568.

2027. 13 April 2027 is a Tuesday, so the three days run Tuesday to Thursday and again need no substitution. The Bank has notified its 2027 calendar — eighteen days in total, with eight long weekends — and the Songkran trio is in it. We did not open the 2027 notification PDF in this run; those dates reach this page through Nation Thailand’s report of the Bank’s announcement, and the Bank’s holiday page carries a selector for 2027 that you can read yourself. The nearest thing to a complication in that year is elsewhere: Asalha Bucha falls on Sunday 18 July 2027, and the usual substitute Monday is already Khao Phansa.

2028 is not settled and this page will not guess. 13 to 15 April 2028 falls Thursday, Friday and Saturday, so the Saturday would normally attract a substitution day on the following Monday. Normally is not the same as announced. No 2028 bank notification or Cabinet resolution was located in this run, so there is no 2028 row here. For the full closure calendar, including which days are substitutions and which close nothing at all, see our Thai holidays and festivals calendar and the public holidays and closures guide.

What actually happened in 2026, in the numbers the city published

Bangkok counts its own festival, and the 2026 count is the single most useful thing on this page for anyone deciding whether to be in town. The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration’s spokesman, Aekvarunyoo Amrapala, gave these figures for 10 to 15 April 2026.

Nearly doubling in a year is the headline, but the waste and fire lines are the ones that tell you what the street felt like. A hundred and two tonnes of rubbish came off Khao San Road alone. Grass fires went from twenty to a hundred and thirty-two, which is what a hot, crowded April does to a city. The BMA said explicitly that its window stopped short of the full seven-day road campaign, and that it would use the 2026 site data to plan 2027 — so expect the water-play zones to be managed differently next year rather than identically.

The road week, dated correctly

The campaign is commonly called the seven dangerous days, and the dates matter because people plan drives around them. In 2026 the window was 10 to 16 April — it opens before the holiday, because the travelling home starts before the holiday. Any page telling you 11 to 17 April is describing a different year or no year at all. The figures below come from the Road Safety Operation Centre briefing chaired by Theerapat Katchamat, director-general of the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation, as published by the Government Public Relations Department on 17 April 2026.

Two things in that table are worth sitting with. The first is that Phrae, a quiet northern province of around four hundred thousand people, logged the most accidents in the country — the risk is not where the crowds are, it is on the roads people drive home on. The second is that ten provinces got through the week with nobody killed, which is a reminder that this is a behavioural problem rather than an inevitable one.

Where two official counts disagree, and why. The DDPM put Bangkok’s cumulative deaths at 21 over 10 to 16 April. The BMA, using the Erawan Centre and its own Traffic and Transportation Department, reported 18 accidents and 20 deaths over 10 to 15 April, with motorcycles in 17 of those deaths and nine of the riders not wearing a helmet. Different windows, different collection systems, both official. We print both rather than picking the one that reads better. One more figure was left off this page on purpose: the two write-ups of the same briefing disagree on which road type saw the most crashes, with the Thai text giving local-authority roads at 47.15 per cent and the English report giving Highways Department roads at 44.72 per cent, so neither is stated here as settled.

If you are driving at all that week, our driving in Thailand guide covers the rules, the Thai driving licence page covers what you are legally allowed to be holding, and the road accident checklist covers the part nobody wants to need. Taking the train or a domestic flight instead is the single biggest thing you can do about these numbers.

Drink-driving enforcement is real, and heavier than visitors expect

On 10 April 2026 — the first day of the campaign, before the holiday had even started — police charged more than 2,600 people nationwide with drink-driving. That figure comes from Pol Lt Gen Trairong Phiwphan, Deputy Inspector-General and spokesman for the Royal Thai Police, speaking at an alcohol checkpoint on Ratchadaphisek Road in Din Daeng. He said police were enforcing ten main traffic offences through the festival, with drink-driving first among them.

Three details from that briefing are the ones a visitor will not have heard. Refusing a breath test without reasonable cause is itself an offence and can be charged immediately. So can putting someone else forward in your place. And drivers who test below the 50 milligram per cent threshold are not simply waved on — they are assessed and sent to sit at a roadside rest point until they are fit to continue. Those are the rules as the police spokesman described them in April 2026; confirm the current legal limits and penalties with the Royal Thai Police rather than with a travel guide, including this one.

Where it actually happens, and where the guides got it wrong

The famous water-fight streets have not moved. The official national festival has, and that is the thing to check before you book a room.

Bangkok: the flagship left Sanam Luang

The government’s own listing for Maha Songkran 2026: World Water Festival, published 10 April 2026, places it at Benjakitti Park, the former Tobacco Factory site, from 11 to 15 April 2026, 11.00 to 22.00, under the theme of a grand Songkran festival of joy across the land. It was built as five regional zones: an Eastern seaside and beach-club area, a Northern Lanna zone with lanterns and temple imagery, an Isan zone with pha khao ma patterns, bai sri decorations, naga motifs and mor lam, a Southern zone built around nang talung shadow puppetry, and a Central zone of giant yaksha figures and Thai literary exhibition. The 2024 and 2025 editions ran on Ratchadamnoen Avenue and Sanam Luang. Several commercial guides, and at least one newspaper social post, were still naming Sanam Luang for 2026.

Away from the official site, the street fights are where they have always been. Silom closes to traffic and fills for a kilometre, busiest around Sala Daeng, and is a major LGBTQ celebration in the evenings. Khao San is the loudest and least forgiving of anything you care about. Siam Square and IconSiam were the two biggest draws by the city’s own count, at 1.53 and 1.47 million. And the version on your own soi, with neighbours and the local wat, is the one most residents end up preferring.

Chiang Mai: the ritual city, and a 730th birthday

Chiang Mai calls its Songkran Pawaeni Pi Mai Mueang, and in 2026 it carried an anniversary. At a press conference on 31 March 2026 at Chiang Mai Municipality, Deputy Governor Siwa Thamikanon and Mayor Assanee Buranupakorn launched Pawaeni Pi Mai Mueang Chiang Mai 2569, marking 730 years of the city. The published programme named the procession of Phra Phuttha Sihing and other important Buddha images for blessing, the Songkran god and goddess pageant, the offering of mai kham sali props for bodhi trees and the carrying of sand into temples in the Lanna manner, a retro ramwong stage, open-air film screenings, and a large water tunnel on Tha Phae Road running as World Songkran Thaphae Chiangmai 2026. The province asked visitors to play politely and respectfully and invited people to wear northern dress.

The exact running order, the hours and the designated water-play zones are set by the municipality and the province each year, and we deliberately have not printed 2026’s times as though they were 2027’s. Get the current notice. If you are weighing the city as a place to live rather than visit, start with our Chiang Mai city guide.

Wan Lai: the part that runs into late April

Here is a correction worth making plainly. Wan Lai is not Pattaya simply running long — it is a separate regional tradition held after the national holiday, in different places on different days, and it stretches much further into the month than most guides admit. In 2026 the Pattaya beachfront event was reported for 17 to 19 April at Central Pattaya beach, Samut Prakan issued water-truck bans for 19 and 26 April, and Thanyaburi in Pathum Thani held its Wan Lai on 26 April. Those are municipal decisions published locally, often only a few weeks ahead. The 2026 Pattaya dates here come from local reporting rather than from the city’s own notice, which we could not reach in this run, and no 2027 Wan Lai dates exist to publish yet.

Alcohol: the hours changed, but place is what catches people

Songkran is not a dry day. The five religious dry days fall elsewhere in the calendar, and we cover them on the Buddhist holy days page.

What did change is the clock. Effective 29 May 2026, following a Royal Gazette announcement by the Alcoholic Beverage Control Committee, alcoholic drinks may generally be sold from 11.00 to 24.00. The 14.00 to 17.00 period, restricted for decades and suspended for a six-month trial in late 2025, is now part of the ordinary permitted window rather than a hole punched in it. Sales outside those hours stay restricted unless separate conditions apply, and hours genuinely vary by venue type, permit and location — international airport areas serving international passengers, hotels, entertainment venues holding the relevant permit and approved event spaces all sit under their own arrangements.

The part that trips people up during a water fight is not the hour, it is the ground they are standing on. Sale and consumption remain restricted in temples, government offices, petrol stations, public parks and public transport areas unless specifically allowed by law. A street party will often be adjacent to several of those at once. The drinking age is 20, and the government’s own guidance notes that sales can also be restricted during elections, major religious days and other officially announced periods. Our nightlife and alcohol guide has the fuller picture.

What closes, and the admin to clear first

Songkran is the biggest shutdown of the Thai year. Banks and specialised financial institutions close for all three days on the Bank of Thailand’s list, and government offices follow the government calendar — immigration, the Land Office, the Revenue Department and embassies are shut, so a visa extension, a 90-day report or an in-person appointment cannot be processed during the break, and the queues thicken on both sides of it. Many small shops, local restaurants, salons and building juristic offices also close for several days as staff travel to their home provinces. Malls, convenience stores, big supermarkets and hospitals generally stay open. Food delivery and ride-hailing keep running, slower and dearer.

For anyone mid-move, the practical reading is simple. Viewings pause, movers and building staff take time off, and a handover or move-in scheduled across the holiday tends to slip. Domestic flights, trains and intercity buses sell out and prices climb. Land a lease signing, a deposit transfer or a relocation either side of the three days, never on them. It is a fine week to already be a tenant and a poor one to be trying to become one.

Leaving an empty place for the week

Almost nothing written for foreign residents mentions this, and it is free. The Royal Thai Police run a seasonal house-watch scheme over Songkran: you register your home and officers include it in their attention while you are away. On 10 April 2026 alone, 1,869 households had signed up. Registration goes through the Police Care app, the house-watch app, or your nearest station, and you are asked to notify them if your travel dates change. Check your doors, windows and valuables before you go, and tell your building’s juristic office you will be out. If you are new to all of this, our first 30 days in Thailand guide covers the rest of the setup.

Playing well: gear, and the unwritten rules

If you step outside, you will be soaked. There is no passing through. Quick-dry clothes, sandals with grip, a sealed waterproof pouch for your phone, cash and cards, and nothing in your pockets you would mind losing. Cheap goggles earn their price against ice water and talc. Leave your passport at home.

The etiquette is short and it is not optional. Do not soak monks, elderly people, babies, or anyone obviously not playing — a wai or a shake of the head means not today, and it is respected. Do not throw water at anyone on a motorbike; it causes crashes, and this is the week the crash figures are already bad. Skip ice water and high-pressure hoses aimed at faces. At the temple, follow the gentle water-pouring rite rather than street rules. Nothing about the fun extends to disrespect toward Thailand’s monarchy or religion. Read the room: a residential soi is not Silom. Our temple etiquette and Thai etiquette guides go further, and a handful of phrases from our Thai language page will change how the week goes for you.

What we could not confirm

This section exists because a gap stated plainly is worth more than a number nobody checked.

• The 2027 bank notification PDF was not opened. The 2027 Songkran dates on this page come from Nation Thailand’s report of the Bank of Thailand’s announcement, not from the notification itself. The underlying dates are not in doubt — 13 to 15 April is fixed — but the citation is second-hand and labelled as such.
• No 2027 government holiday list was located. The Bank has notified 2027 for financial institutions. We found no Cabinet resolution or Prime Minister’s Office announcement setting the 2027 government holidays, which is a different list.
• No 2028 dates are printed. 15 April 2028 is a Saturday and would normally draw a substitution Monday. Nothing has been announced, so nothing is stated.
• The national government events listing was unreachable. The Government Contact Centre page carrying the official nationwide Songkran 2569 event list could not be loaded from this run, so the Pattaya and provincial dates here rest on local reporting rather than on that listing.
• No exact astrological announcement is quoted. The moment the sun enters Aries is published annually in Thailand, and we did not open the 2026 or 2027 announcement, so no time is printed.
• No 2027 event dates or venues exist yet for Maha Songkran, Chiang Mai or any Wan Lai observance. The 2026 venue move in Bangkok is the reason to wait for the official notice rather than assume last year’s address.
• UNESCO gives a year, not a day. The inscription is recorded as 2023, at the Committee’s eighteenth session. Pages that print a specific December date are adding precision UNESCO’s own entry does not carry.

Songkran: frequently asked