Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.Lee@cnc3.co.tt

There are, at this time, of­fi­cial­ly five pub­lic hol­i­days in 2026 that fall on ei­ther a Fri­day or a Mon­day, cre­at­ing a pe­ri­od most Trin­bag­o­ni­ans look for­ward to—long week­ends.

Based on the cal­en­dar for next year, the first of­fi­cial long week­end will run from March 28 to 30, with Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist Lib­er­a­tion Day ob­served on Mon­day, March 30.

But Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day fall on Feb­ru­ary 16 and 17, while the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty is ten­ta­tive­ly set to cel­e­brate Eid-ul-Fitr on Fri­day, March 20, pend­ing the sight­ing of the moon, which, once con­firmed, would bring the long week­end count to six, or sev­en if you in­clude Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day, which are not pub­lic hol­i­days.

Di­vali is ten­ta­tive­ly ex­pect­ed to be ob­served on Mon­day, No­vem­ber 9.

April be­gins with a long week­end, with Good Fri­day on April 3 and East­er Mon­day on April 6.

Labour Day falls on Fri­day, June 19, and In­de­pen­dence Day is ob­served on Mon­day, Au­gust 31.

While Christ­mas Day falls on a Fri­day.

In 2025, there were nine long week­ends, in­clud­ing Car­ni­val.

To quote the open­ing lyrics of the pop­u­lar John­ny King song Wet Meh Down, “You know Tri­nis like to par­ty, you know Tri­nis like to fete”—hear­ing that three pub­lic hol­i­days are falling on Thurs­days in 2026 may be like mu­sic to their ears.

They are Cor­pus Christi on Thurs­day, June 4, Re­pub­lic Day on Sep­tem­ber 24, and this Thurs­day, which is New Year’s Day. Fri­day is a reg­u­lar work­ing day.

Bar­keep­ers and Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (BOATT) pres­i­dent Satesh Moonasar be­lieves these long week­ends could pos­i­tive­ly im­pact bars in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, as many Trin­bag­o­ni­ans like to ven­ture to those ar­eas.

“It de­pends on the long week­end and how it falls be­cause what nor­mal­ly hap­pens on long week­ends is fam­i­lies nor­mal­ly plan fam­i­ly limes, and they go to dif­fer­ent ar­eas of the coun­try, like in vil­las and beach hous­es and stuff. So it de­pends on the ge­o­graph­i­cal area; it will be ben­e­fi­cial to some but not all,” Moonasar said.

He be­lieves bars in To­ba­go may al­so see an uptick in their sales for the long week­ends.

Con­sid­er­ing the in­crease in al­co­hol prices and gam­ing tax­es, the pres­i­dent en­cour­aged rur­al bar own­ers to try and “make things work.”

“Well, it de­pends on the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try and how the Gov­ern­ment has made de­ci­sions. And as good busi­ness own­ers, what you have to do is try and rein­vent your­self ... You have to try, and as the time changes,” he stat­ed.

And for the fam­i­lies plan­ning to vis­it rur­al ar­eas or just the beach, co-founder of RSJ Tours & Ad­ven­tures, cer­ti­fied eco­tourism tour guide and life­guard Ron­dell Joseph ad­vised them to vis­it beach­es where life­guards are on pa­trol.

“There are ap­prox­i­mate­ly ten beach­es pa­trolled by life­guards, and these beach­es are Mara­cas Bay, Tyri­co Bay, Las Cuevas, Saly­bia Bay, To­co, Man­zanil­la, Los Iros, Ves­signy and Quinam, and the pa­trol hours are be­tween 10 am and 5.30 pm on a dai­ly ba­sis. The life­guards are there to en­sure your safe­ty,” he said.

He ex­plained that a lot of peo­ple like to camp on dif­fer­ent beach­es and go in­to un­known wa­ters that are very rough and dan­ger­ous.

He al­so ad­vised the peo­ple who like to play foot­ball and crick­et on the beach not to fol­low the balls in­to the ocean and get in­to dif­fi­cul­ties.

“And for the peo­ple who like ad­ven­ture... like hik­ing and stuff, es­pe­cial­ly if you’re go­ing with that group, I will al­ways rec­om­mend that you take a rep­utable group that is cer­ti­fied in first aid and a tour guide or cer­ti­fied eco­tourism tour guide,” he ex­plained.

Joseph said sev­er­al groups are cer­ti­fied, and some ques­tions to ask are: if they’re car­ry­ing life jack­ets and if they’re trained in first aid, to en­sure your safe­ty.

He urged the pub­lic not to go ad­ven­tur­ing on trails that are un­known to them.

“So, I rec­om­mend the pop­u­la­tion to take your safe­ty very, very se­ri­ous­ly be­cause your safe­ty comes first and hike with rep­utable groups and groups that will en­sure your safe­ty, es­pe­cial­ly church groups who are go­ing camp­ing for those six long week­ends in the com­ing year,” he said.