Pricing for Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha and the Hajj season

The two Eids are the holidays the whole country shares: offices close, schools close for longer, and families travel or gather. Hajj is different. In Makkah it is not simply a busier version of the Umrah season, because who may enter the city changes in the weeks before it. This guide takes each in turn, using the dates in the JokerPrice events calendar.

The dates, and how certain they are

Both Eids and Hajj follow the Hijri calendar and arrive about eleven days earlier each Gregorian year. The length of each holiday is announced separately, often only weeks before. In 2026 the Eid al-Fitr holiday for the private and non-profit sectors ran 19 – 22 March 2026 (expected dates, may move) and the Eid al-Adha holiday ran 26 – 29 May 2026 (expected dates, may move). For 2027 the calendar holds the Eid al-Fitr holiday on 9 – 12 March 2027 (expected dates, may move), the Hajj days on 14 – 19 May 2027 (expected dates, may move) and the Eid al-Adha holiday on 15 – 18 May 2027 (expected dates, may move). The 2027 holidays have not been announced yet, so they are shown with the same length as in 2026 and marked expected.

School breaks are longer and already official. The Ministry of Education's Eid al-Fitr break for 2027 runs 26 February – 13 March 2027 (expected dates, may move) and its Eid al-Adha break runs 7 – 22 May 2027 (expected dates, may move). For family properties such as chalets, villas and rest houses, the school break, not the work holiday, defines the window in which a family can take a longer trip.

Eid al-Fitr: a short, sharp peak after a long month

Eid al-Fitr follows straight on from Ramadan. In the holy cities the busiest nights of the Umrah year run directly into the holiday; elsewhere the end of Ramadan and the start of Eid can behave like two different markets. It helps to think about Eid in three parts.

• The nights before Eid. The exact Eid day depends on the moon sighting, so the last night of Ramadan and the first night of Eid can swap places at a day's notice. Keep those two nights flexible on both price and minimum stay.
• The holiday itself. When the holiday joins a Friday and Saturday weekend, the whole stretch behaves like one long weekend. A guest booking it is buying a holiday, not a night, which is why a minimum stay across the core nights makes sense: it stops the middle of the holiday being sold as single nights.
• The days after. Once employees return to work, the guests who can still travel are those on a school or personal break. Have a plan for those nights, such as a shorter minimum stay or a smaller premium, rather than leaving them at holiday prices.

Eid al-Adha and Hajj: two markets in one week

For most of the country Eid al-Adha is a holiday like Eid al-Fitr, and the same three-part approach works. In Makkah the weeks around Hajj follow rules of their own. For the 1447 season the Ministry of Interior announced that from 13 April 2026 residents needed a permit to enter Makkah, that holders of visas other than Hajj visas could not enter or stay in the city from 18 April, and that Umrah permits through Nusuk were suspended from 18 April to 31 May 2026. In those weeks the guests a Makkah property can host are limited to people with the right permits, so demand from earlier in the year is no guide to what those nights are worth.

The rules for Hajj 1448, which the calendar expects on 14 – 19 May 2027 (expected dates, may move), have not been published yet. Before you price the weeks leading up to it, read that season's announcements and decide whether the property can be sold in those weeks, and to whom.

The end of Hajj reopens Umrah. In 1447 the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah's Umrah season calendar started issuing visas for the next season on 14 Dhu al-Hijjah, straight after the Hajj days. Madinah sits between both: many pilgrims visit the Prophet's Mosque before or after Hajj, so the weeks either side deserve a look at the Madinah calendar and the Madinah market report rather than an ordinary-week price.

In Riyadh, Jeddah and the leisure destinations the question is simply which nights families can travel. Compare the work holiday with the longer school break, and price the nights in between as shoulder nights rather than peak ones.

Setting it up in JokerPrice

• Event rules are opt-in. You can switch on a whole kind, such as every religious event or every school break, or single events. Each takes an adjustment from −30% to +100% and an optional minimum stay, as the events calendar explains.
• If you switch on the whole religious kind, remember that it includes the Islamic New Year, which is not a public holiday in Saudi Arabia. You can turn single events off inside an enabled kind.
• Eid, Hajj and the school breaks overlap. On a night covered by several enabled events, the plan uses the adjustment with the largest size, not the sum, and the longest minimum-stay suggestion among them, unless you have set a minimum stay on that night yourself.
• Expected dates are labelled as expected in each night's explanation, with the source, until the announcement arrives and the calendar is updated.
• Weekend, last-minute and far-out rules still apply, and the event adjustment comes after them, so they compound. If a holiday night should never receive a last-minute discount, give it a fixed nightly price, which bypasses every adjustment but still respects your limits.
• After each event, the city calendar pages, for example Makkah, show occupancy and booked rates observed during the event against the four weeks before it, once enough tracked nights exist.

Checklist

• Load the coming year's Eid, Hajj and school-break dates from the events calendar, and note which are still expected.
• Treat the nights before Eid, the holiday and the days after as three separate decisions.
• For family properties, price against the school break as well as the work holiday.
• Set a minimum stay for the core holiday nights and decide when it relaxes.
• In Makkah, read the season's entry and permit rules before opening the weeks before Hajj for sale.
• If you enable a whole kind, switch off the events you do not want, such as the Islamic New Year.
• Check your maximum price, then export the plan and update your listing.