Are Banks Open? Guatemala's 2026 Bank Closure Calendar and ACH Rules

There are two holiday calendars in Guatemala and most people only know about one. The Labour Code’s list is what your employer owes you. The banking system runs a second list, approved by the Junta Monetaria and published by the Superintendencia de Bancos, and the two do not match in either direction. That mismatch is why a transfer fails on a day that is not a public holiday — and why a branch is open on one that is.

Our 2026 holidays page covers the Labour Code side: the dates, the pay rules, Semana Santa. This page is the banking side.

The 2026 bank closure calendar

Full days the banking system is shut, exactly as the SIB’s calendar prints them:

Afternoon half-days — the counter closes at midday:

And two dates the calendar lists but leaves to each institution, so you have to check your own bank:

The document is headed “Calendario de Asuetos del Sistema Bancario para 2026 aprobados por Junta Monetaria”, and the Monday shifts are already resolved in it — you do not have to apply them yourself.

How we know the dates are right

The calendar is a PDF with no text layer, so the rows above were transcribed from a full-resolution render rather than extracted. A transcription can slip, so it carries a test: every weekday name the SIB prints must match the real 2026 calendar. All fifteen dated rows pass — Thursday 1 January, Wednesday 1 April, Thursday 2 April, Friday 3 April, Friday 1 May, Friday 26 June, Monday 29 June, Friday 14 August, Tuesday 15 September, Monday 12 October, Tuesday 20 October, Monday 2 November, Thursday 24 December, Friday 25 December, Thursday 31 December. Our collector re-runs that check on every build and refuses to publish the calendar if a single row disagrees.

The two lists are genuinely different

This is the finding that makes the page worth reading.

Article 127 of the Código de Trabajo, Decreto 1441, is the actual legal list — “Son días de asueto con goce de salario para los trabajadores particulares: el 1o. de enero; el Jueves, Viernes y Sábado Santos; el 1o. de mayo, el 30 de junio, el 15 de septiembre, el 20 de octubre, el 1o. de noviembre, el 24 de diciembre, mediodía, a partir de las doce horas, el 25 de diciembre, el 31 de diciembre, mediodía, a partir de las doce horas, y el día de la festividad de la localidad.”

Note the two half-days are written into the law itself: the asueto on 24 and 31 December begins “a partir de las doce horas”, from midday. It is not a full day off in either calendar.

A correction worth making, because it circulates widely: Decreto 19-2018 is frequently cited as the source of Guatemala’s holiday list. It is not. It is a reform to Decreto 42-2010, the Ley que Promueve el Turismo Interno, and its only operative effect is the Monday shift. Its own text limits itself: “Como consecuencia la presente Ley se aplicará para los siguientes asuetos: uno de mayo, treinta de junio, veinte de octubre y en todo casó, los descansos establecidos en ·otras leyes.” (The OCR noise is in the Congress’s own scan of the Diario de Centro América.) The list is Article 127; 19-2018 only moves things.

And the 2026 calendar does not follow that Monday rule anyway

Set the two documents side by side and the shift is applied inconsistently:

We cannot explain that, and we are not going to guess. A ruling removing 1 May and 20 October from the tourism law would account for the first two rows and not the fourth, and we could not retrieve any such ruling from a primary source. Plan on the dates in the SIB calendar, which is what the banks actually follow, not on your own application of the Monday rule.

What still moves money when the branch is shut

The practical question is not whether the door is open. It is whether your transfer lands.

Batch transfers stop. Instant transfers do not. BAC publishes both halves:

• Batch (Guate ACH crédito y débito): “En días no hábiles (sábado, domingo y asuetos del sistema bancario), no se acreditará transferencias Guate ACH crédito y débito.”
• Instant ACH: runs “Lunes a viernes de 7:00 a.m. a 9:00 p.m.”, and on weekends too, with the line that matters here — “Se incluyen asuetos y días festivos.”

The ceiling is the catch. Instant ACH is capped: “Monto máximo diario Q20,000 o $2,500”, with a fee of “Comisión de Q5 por envío de transferencia o su equivalente para transferencias en USD”. Anything above that ceiling is a batch transfer, and a batch transfer sent into a holiday waits. If you need to move more than Q20,000 and a bank asueto is coming, send it the business day before.

Banrural describes the same split in its own words. Instant: “Disponibilidad del servicio: Todos los días, de 7:00 hrs. a 21:00 hrs.”, crediting “Entre 5 y 10 minutos, como máximo”, with anything “Mayores a Q20,000.00 o $2,500.00” treated as a bulk transfer whose “Disponibilidad del servicio: lunes a viernes.” Its cut-off note is the one to remember on a holiday eve: “Nota: Transferencias realizadas posterior a las 21:00 hrs. serán acreditadas a las 9:00 hrs. del siguiente día hábil.”

Underneath both banks sits one rail. Banguat publishes the operator’s timetable — “HORARIO DE OPERACION DE LA CAMARA DE COMPENSACION AUTOMATIZADA” — whose instant window is “07:00 a 21:00 Carga de transacciones electrónicas monetarias EB”, approved in “resolución número 37-2022 del Gerente General del Banco de Guatemala, del 23 de marzo de 2022”. The banks’ published hours are that rail’s hours.

What Banguat does not publish is a list of non-business banking days. The banguat.gob.gt/es/page/dias-inhabiles path returns a 404 on every fetch method we tried on 20 September 2026, and the clearing-house pages carry only a time-of-day schedule that never names a date. The SIB calendar above is the real answer.

Your own branch’s hours: go to the regulator, not the bank

For each holiday period the SIB publishes an agency-by-agency roster — every branch that will open and the hours it will keep. The Semana Santa 2026 file (metadata title “Horarios Especiales del 01 al 05 de abril de 2026.xls”) is 23 pages and 1,201 rows, one line per branch per day:

“BANCO INDUSTRIAL, S. A. AGUILAR BATRES 09:00 a 14:00” “BANCO DE DESARROLLO RURAL, S. A. SAN JOSE PINULA 07:00 a 12:00” “BANCO CUSCATLÁN GUATEMALA, S. A. MIRAFLORES 10:00 a 20:00 10:00 a 20:00 10:00 a 20:00 10:00 a 19:00” “BANCO G&T CONTINENTAL, S. A. BARBERENA 14:00 a 22:00 14:00 a 22:00”

Branch coverage in that file, by institution: Banrural 307 rows, Banco Industrial 193, Agromercantil 113, Promerica 105, BAC 84, G&T Continental 83, Banco Internacional 62, CHN 59, Bantrab 50, Cuscatlán 6, Azteca 4, plus Banco de Antigua, Ficohsa Guatemala and Credicorp with a handful each.

Read it, do not generalise from it. Two mall branches kept 10:00–20:00 hours through that week while street branches ran mornings only — but that is two named branches in one holiday week, not a published policy. There is no sector rule that mall branches open on asuetos.

Why we point at the regulator instead of the banks

Because we checked the banks, and their own pages are the weakest source on this subject. Measured on 20 September 2026: Banco Industrial’s hours explainer is still titled for 2025; Bantrab’s only hours page serves a 2020 image and a 2017 PDF; G&T Continental’s branch locator prints Horario no disponible for every branch; Promerica and Banco Industrial publish their current notices as flat images with no text at all. One more, for anyone following an old link: gytcontinental.com.gt is dead — G&T’s live site is gtc.com.gt.

Banks may set their own counters, but they must clear changes with the regulator. That is Article 43 of the Ley de Bancos y Grupos Financieros: the hours “y los cambios que se efectúen deberán comunicarse a la Superintendencia de Bancos, por lo menos con cinco días de anticipación a la entrada en vigencia de los mismos”, and any general suspension of service “sólo podrá ser realizada previa comunicación al público y autorización de la Superintendencia de Bancos.” The SIB is downstream of every hours change by law, which is exactly why its files are current when the banks’ pages are not.

One thing we will not tell you

That ATMs are guaranteed to work on a holiday. No bank in anything we read publishes that commitment. The closest published lines are Banrural’s Servicio Cajero 5B, Lunes a domingo, 24 horas — which is the 5B network’s support line, not a statement that every machine is stocked — and BAC’s generic description of its ATM and Rapibac network. Press coverage advises the opposite direction, warning that machines run dry on high-demand dates. Treat cash before a long asueto as a planning problem, not a solved one.

Related on this site

• The other calendar: Guatemala’s 2026 holidays — dates, bridge days, asueto pay rules.
• Moving money in and out: remittances and the USD–quetzal exchange rate.
• Choosing where to bank: banks in Guatemala and the wire transfer fee comparator.
• A closure with a different cause: what a CONRED alert level does and does not oblige — it does not close banks.