Korea in October 2026: Holidays, What Closes, and Booking Dates

Last checked: 2026-09-25 · Sources: Korea AeroSpace Administration, 2026 calendar notice (월력요항), Seoul Silver Grass Festival page, festival.seoul.go.kr, Gyeongbokgung reservation hub, royal.khs.go.kr, palace visiting hours and closing days, royal.khs.go.kr, BIFF official site, National Museum of Korea viewing hours, Seoul city media hub, 2025 Lantern Festival, edaily report quoting the Gyeongbokgung office · What changed recently: added on September 25 — every palace, Jongmyo and the royal tombs close on Tuesday, October 6; BIFF ticket sales opened on September 21; the Gyeongbokgung night-viewing season ends on October 2; the Silver Grass Festival dates (October 17-23) are now on the city's festival page.

The top result for "Korea in October" is a Reddit thread from a first-time visitor, and the replies are about weather and foliage. Fair enough. But October 2026 has something that a generic autumn guide cannot tell you: two three-day weekends back to back, one of them created by a substitute holiday that exists only this year. Those two weekends decide whether your KTX seat, your hotel in Busan and your immigration appointment are available, so this guide starts from the calendar and works outward.

Everything below comes from a Korean government page or an official festival page, each opened on September 23, 2026. Where a date is not yet published, the text says so instead of guessing.

The three dates that matter

Korea's public holidays for 2026 were fixed by the Korea AeroSpace Administration's calendar notice of June 30, 2025. I cross-checked the October entries against that notice rather than a holiday aggregator, because aggregators still disagree about the substitute day. The notice lists the year's three-day-plus holiday periods and includes both October blocks in its own words: "10월 3~5일(개천절, 일요일 및 개천절 대체공휴일, 3일), 10월 9~11일(한글날 및 토·일요일, 3일)".

Date	Weekday	What it is	Why it matters
October 3	Saturday	National Foundation Day (개천절)	Public holiday that lands on a Saturday
October 5	Monday	Substitute holiday for October 3	Government offices, banks and immigration offices close; a three-day weekend for the whole country
October 9	Friday	Hangul Day (한글날)	Second three-day weekend, October 9-11

The substitute holiday is the detail visitors miss. Under Korea's substitute-holiday rules, a national holiday that falls on a Saturday moves its day off to the following Monday. In 2026 that is October 5. In 2027 the same holiday falls on a Sunday and the substitute is Monday, October 4, so the exact October 3-5 block is specific to 2026.

What closes on October 5 and October 9

Public holidays in Korea close the same things every time: government service centers, banks, post offices, courts, and the immigration offices that handle residence cards. If you are a new arrival with a 90-day registration deadline, the HiKorea appointment calendar will simply not offer those two days. Our alien registration guide explains how the deadline is counted and what to do when no slot is free.

What does not close is more useful to know, with one trap on the day after:

Place	October 5 and 9, 2026	Source
National Museum of Korea	Open. Its published closure days are January 1, Seollal (Feb 17, 2026) and Chuseok (Sept 25, 2026) only; on Wednesdays and Saturdays it stays open to 21:00	museum.go.kr viewing hours
The four royal palaces, Jongmyo and the royal tombs	Open on both days. A palace whose weekly closing day falls on a public holiday opens and closes on the next non-holiday instead, so the Monday closers (Changdeokgung, Deoksugung, Changgyeonggung, the royal tombs) open on October 5 and close on Tuesday, October 6	royal.khs.go.kr visiting hours
Department stores and franchise chains	Open. Korean retail treats public holidays as peak days	Pattern, not a notice
Small restaurants and family shops	Mostly open. October holidays are not family-return holidays like Chuseok, so the closures that empty Seoul in late September do not repeat	Pattern, not a notice

October 6 is the day to avoid the palaces. The heritage administration's visiting-hours page lists the weekly closing days: Monday for Changdeokgung, Deoksugung, Changgyeonggung and the royal tombs; Tuesday for Gyeongbokgung and Jongmyo. It adds the rule in its own words: "정기휴일이 공휴일 및 대체공휴일과 겹칠 경우에는 개방하며, 그 다음의 첫 번째 비공휴일이 정기휴일임" (a closing day that lands on a holiday or substitute holiday becomes an open day, and the palace closes on the next non-holiday instead). I applied that rule to the October calendar. The Monday palaces open on the October 5 substitute holiday and shift their closure to Tuesday, October 6, which is already Gyeongbokgung's and Jongmyo's regular day off. The result is that all four Seoul palaces, Jongmyo and the royal tombs are closed on October 6. The National Museum of Korea is open that day. Hangul Day (Friday, October 9) does not collide with any palace's closing day, so nothing shifts in the second weekend.

The difference between an October holiday and Chuseok is worth stating plainly. Chuseok (September 24-27 this year) sends millions of people to their hometowns and closes markets for two or three days; our Chuseok 2026 guide lists what actually shut. October 3 and October 9 are civic holidays. People go to Jeju, Gangwon and Busan for the weekend, which is why the cost lands on transport and hotels rather than on closed doors.

Events with dates published as of today

I traced each date below to the organizer's own page or notice, not to a listicle. Two of the entries changed since the summer, which is the reason to check again before you book.

Event	Dates	Where	Booking and cost	Verified on
Busan International Film Festival (BIFF), 31st edition	October 6-15	Busan Cinema Center and partner theaters	Online at ticket.biff.kr, on sale since September 21; see the subtitle-code guide below	biff.kr
Gyeongbokgung night viewing, second half of 2026	September 2 to October 2, closed Mondays and Tuesdays, 19:00-21:30 (last entry 20:30)	Gyeongbokgung, Seoul	3,000 won. Online tickets were sold in advance on NOL from August 26; foreign visitors can buy 300 same-day tickets per day at the Gwanghwamun box office, two per person	Gyeongbokgung office via edaily
Gyeonghoeru and Hyangwonjeong special tours	Wednesdays and Fridays, September 2 to October 30	Gyeongbokgung	Reservation through the royal.khs.go.kr hub	royal.khs.go.kr
Seoul Silver Grass Festival (서울억새축제), 25th edition	October 17-23	Haneul Park, Seoul World Cup Park	Free park; the page describes evening lighting shows but has not posted hours	festival.seoul.go.kr
Seoul Lantern Festival (서울빛초롱축제)	Not in October. The 2025 edition ran December 12, 2025 to January 18, 2026 at Cheonggyecheon; 2026 dates were not on the city's page on September 23	Cheonggyecheon	Free	mediahub.seoul.go.kr

Two notes on that table. First, several travel blogs already print "2026 Seoul Lantern Festival: November 1 to January 31". I compared that claim with the city's own report on the 2025 edition, which ran from mid-December, and found no official 2026 announcement yet. Treat the November date as unconfirmed until the Seoul Tourism Organization posts it. Second, the Gyeongbokgung night season ends on October 2, which means the first three-day weekend (October 3-5) has no night viewing at Gyeongbokgung. If a night palace visit is the point of your trip, the last available evenings are Wednesday, September 30 to Friday, October 2.

For the regional festivals that fill the rest of the month, including which ones publish English pages and take foreign bookings, see our October 2026 festivals guide. It is maintained separately because those dates move.

BIFF and the two three-day weekends

BIFF opens on Tuesday, October 6, the day after the substitute holiday. That timing matters for two reasons. Trains and hotels into Busan are already heavy over October 3-5, and the festival's first weekend (October 9-11) coincides with the Hangul Day weekend. If you are choosing between the two festival weekends, the second one, October 9-11, is the one where domestic demand peaks.

The practical detail most English guides skip is the subtitle code printed next to each screening. One code means a film has no English subtitles at all. Our BIFF 2026 guide explains the codes, the prices and the refund rules from the festival's own booking pages.

Entering Korea in October: the paperwork that is still in force

Nothing about entry changes in October, but two rules are worth restating because they are in force through the end of 2026. The temporary K-ETA exemption for eligible nationalities runs to December 31, 2026, which means most short-term visitors from exempt countries do not apply for K-ETA; our K-ETA exemption guide lists who is covered and what changes if you apply anyway. The e-Arrival Card, the online landing card, is filed within three days before arrival and is separate from K-ETA.

Weather, briefly

October is the month Korean forecasters describe as the most stable of the year, and the foliage reaches Seoul's palaces in the last ten days of the month. The Korea Meteorological Administration publishes the 1991-2020 climate normals for Seoul on its data portal, but the portal requires a form submission and does not expose a plain table, so this guide does not reprint numbers that it could not read from the source page. Travel blogs quote figures that differ from one another by two or three degrees; if the exact normal matters to you, the KMA portal at data.kma.go.kr/normals is the place to read it.

FAQ

Is October 5, 2026 a public holiday in Korea? Yes. National Foundation Day falls on Saturday, October 3, so Monday, October 5 is the substitute holiday under the 2026 calendar notice. Offices, banks and immigration offices are closed.

Is Hangul Day a day off? Yes. Hangul Day is a public holiday on Friday, October 9, 2026, which creates a three-day weekend to October 11.

Are the palaces open on October 5 and 9? Yes, all of them open on both days. The catch is Tuesday, October 6: the Monday-closing palaces move their day off from the October 5 holiday to the 6th, and Gyeongbokgung and Jongmyo close on Tuesdays anyway, so every palace, Jongmyo and the royal tombs are shut that day. Gyeongbokgung's night viewing ends on October 2.

Is the National Museum of Korea open on Korean holidays? Yes. Its closure days are January 1, Seollal and Chuseok. In October 2026 it is open every day, with late hours to 21:00 on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

When is BIFF 2026? October 6-15, 2026, in Busan. Tickets have been on sale since September 21.

When is the Seoul Lantern Festival 2026? Not announced by the city as of September 23, 2026. The 2025 edition ran from December 12 to January 18, so plan on December rather than November unless the official page says otherwise.

Hello Korea

Korea e-Arrival Card 2026: Who Files, the 3-Day Window, and Q-CODE