Top picks from this guide
#1
Ngurah Rai International Airport
In 2026 the airport stood down for the full 24 hours, 06:00 on 19 March 2026 to 06:00 on 20 March 2026, under NOTAM A0096. General manager Nugroho Jati put the total at 440 flights cancelled, 231 domestic and 209 international, with 19 aircraft left parked on the apron overnight. The 2025 closure removed 425 flights, 207 domestic and 218 international, under general manager Ahmad Syaugi Shahab. Medical evacuation and emergency flights are the only exceptions.
#2
Gilimanuk and Ketapang, the Java crossing
Gilimanuk closed at 05:00 on 19 March 2026, an hour ahead of the airport, and reopened at 06:00 on 20 March 2026. The Java side works on a different clock and a different time zone: Ketapang stopped at 17:00 WIB on 18 March 2026 and did not restart until 06:00 WIB on 20 March 2026. Counted end to end, the crossing was dead from the evening before Nyepi, not from Nyepi morning.
#3
Padangbai, and what ASDP published for 2024
Padangbai shut earliest and opened latest of the Bali terminals: 04:00 on 19 March 2026 through to 11:30 on 20 March 2026, five and a half hours after the airport was already working. The ASDP release for 2024, from spokesperson Shelvy Arifin, shows the same shape elsewhere: Ketapang closing from 01:00 with a final sailing at 23:00 the night before and resuming on 12 March 2024 at 05:00, Lembar with a last ferry at 03:30 and a 10:00 restart.
#4
Sanur harbour and the Penida boats
Sanur harbour operates 06:00 to 18:00 on every day of the year except Nyepi, when it does not operate at all. The restrictions extend to Nusa Penida, Lembongan and Ceningan, and not to Java or Lombok. One point that confuses visitors regularly: Penida also holds its own Nyepi Segara on a separate date, which in 2025 ran from 06:00 on 7 October 2025 to 06:00 on 8 October 2025. It is a second closure, not the one in the national calendar.
#5
Mobile data, television and radio
Komdigi circular No. 2/2026, signed by minister Meutya Hafid, switches off mobile data, television and radio broadcast, and IPTV. Fixed-line internet, Wi-Fi delivered over fibre, SMS and voice calls stay on. Hospitals, guard posts, police, TNI, BMKG, BPBD, Basarnas and the fire service are exempt. In 2026 the shutdown did not land in full: live streams kept appearing from Bali on social media, and the minister said the gap would be recorded and evaluated for the following Nyepi.
#6
Street lighting
The darkness is switched, not requested. Denpasar turns off 18,627 street lamps through 697 distribution boxes, work done by around 70 people at roughly 23:00 on the night of Pengerupukan, per the 2023 figures. Buleleng counted 16,178 lighting points for 2026. Point 5 of the joint appeal covers the private side of the same rule: no leaving the house, no firecrackers, no loudspeakers, no excessive light.
#7
ATMs and cash
Machines go off the evening before and come back the morning after. Part of the BCA network in Denpasar and Kuta was switched off at 21:00 on 18 March 2026 and turned back on during the morning of 20 March 2026. The cause is the lighting rule rather than the banking system: mobile banking and BI-FAST transfers keep working through the day. What stops is the lit box on the street, not the money behind it.
#8
Hotel check-in and check-out
Both are prohibited on Nyepi, so hotels answer with a minimum of two nights across the date. A single night over Nyepi is not a stay anyone will sell you. Plan to be in your room by the evening before and to leave no earlier than the following morning. There is no version of the day in which you land, cross the island and settle in, because none of those three movements is permitted.
The 24 hours are official, and they start at 06:00
The document people should be reading is the Seruan Bersama issued by FKUB Bali together with Kanwil Kemenag and published on 6 March 2026. Its wording sets the window precisely: terhitung mulai hari Kamis, 19 Maret 2026 pukul 06.00 WITA sampai dengan hari Jumat, 20 Maret 2026 pukul 06.00 WITA. It is countersigned under diketahui by the governor of Bali, the head of Polda Bali and the commander of Korem 163/Wira Satya, a military resort command rather than a military district. Point 5 spells out the restrictions in plain terms: do not leave the house, no firecrackers, no loudspeakers, no excessive light.
Everything else is derived from four vows, the Catur Brata Penyepian: amati geni, amati karya, amati lelungan and amati lelanguan. No fire or light, no work, no travel, no entertainment. That is worth holding onto, because it explains why the closures are not a list of separate policies that might be waived one at a time. An airport shutting for 24 hours and a street lamp going dark at 23:00 the night before are the same rule applied to different equipment.
The date itself moves, because Nyepi is set on the Balinese calendar and not the Gregorian one. In 2026 it fell on 19 March 2026. For the following year the sources disagree: some give 8 March 2027 and others 9 March 2027, and the joint decree of three ministers that fixes the national holiday calendar had not been issued as of August 2026, so there is no settled answer yet. Treat any Nyepi date you see written without a year attached as unusable. Our month-by-month guide to Bali covers how the rest of the calendar behaves around it.
The airport: 440 flights, and the first plane lands at 06:52
Ngurah Rai closes under a NOTAM, which in 2026 was A0096, covering 06:00 on 19 March 2026 to 06:00 on 20 March 2026. General manager Nugroho Jati gave the count as 440 flights cancelled, 231 domestic and 209 international, and 19 aircraft spent the night parked on the apron because they could not be moved. The year before, under general manager Ahmad Syaugi Shahab, the figure was 425 flights, split 207 domestic and 218 international. Medical evacuation and emergency flights are the stated exceptions, and they are the only ones.
The edges of the window matter more than the middle. On the announced 2026 schedule the last domestic departure was 23:10 on 18 March 2026 and the last international departure 01:30 on 19 March 2026. On the other side, the airport communications office, through Gede Eka Sandi Asmadi, recorded what actually happened: the first arrival was Citilink QG 692 from Surabaya at 06:52, followed by Hongkong Airlines HX 707 at 06:58. The first departures came later, QG 691 at 08:10 and HX 706 at 09:00.
The practical version of that is short. After 06:00 is not the same as at 06:00, and departures in particular sit closer to 08:00 and 09:00. If you are connecting through Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur or Singapore on the morning after Nyepi, build the itinerary around a Bali departure two or three hours after the airport technically reopens, and do not book a same-morning onward flight with a tight layover. Airlines rebuild the schedule through the day, so a seat listed for the first hour after reopening is a planning assumption, not a plane.
Ports close before the airport and reopen after it
The sea shuts earlier and opens later than the air, in both directions, and this is where itineraries break. For 2026 the times were: Gilimanuk closed 05:00 on 19 March 2026 and reopened 06:00 on 20 March 2026; Padangbai closed 04:00 on 19 March 2026 and reopened 11:30 on 20 March 2026; Ketapang on the Java side closed 17:00 WIB on 18 March 2026 and reopened 06:00 WIB on 20 March 2026. Padangbai is the outlier worth writing down, because it comes back five and a half hours after Ngurah Rai has already reopened.
The pattern is not new. The ASDP release for 2024, from Shelvy Arifin, describes Ketapang closing from 01:00 with the last sailing at 23:00 the night before and service resuming on 12 March 2024 at 05:00, and Lembar taking its final ferry at 03:30 and resuming at 10:00. Sanur harbour, which handles the fast boats, works 06:00 to 18:00 daily and does not work on Nyepi at all. In practical terms the crossing you are counting on has probably stopped by the time you go to bed on the eve of Nyepi.
Two points of scope. First, the restrictions extend to Nusa Penida, Lembongan and Ceningan, and not to Java or Lombok, which is why the Java-side terminal closes on Bali's timetable rather than its own. Second, Penida keeps a separate observance called Nyepi Segara on a different date entirely: in 2025 it ran 06:00 on 7 October 2025 to 06:00 on 8 October 2025. Visitors regularly confuse the two and turn up at Sanur on a day when only Penida has closed, or plan around Penida's date thinking it is the island-wide one.
Internet, ATMs and street lights: what is off and what only claims to be
Komdigi circular No. 2/2026, signed by minister Meutya Hafid, is specific about the split. Off: mobile data, television and radio broadcast, IPTV. On: fixed-line internet, Wi-Fi delivered over fibre, SMS and voice calls. Exempt entirely: hospitals, guard posts, police, TNI, BMKG, BPBD, Basarnas and the fire service. So the common line that Bali goes offline is wrong in both directions. Your phone loses data in the street and your villa may keep working Wi-Fi, and a text message or a phone call goes through either way.
It is also worth saying that in 2026 the shutdown did not work as written. Live streams kept coming out of Bali on social media through the day, and the minister's own comment was that this would be recorded and could be evaluated for the next Nyepi. Plan for no mobile data, because that is the instruction, and do not plan on having it because the instruction slipped once. Download maps, boarding passes and anything you need offline the day before.
The lights are a separate operation and a physical one. Denpasar switches off 18,627 street lamps through 697 distribution boxes, a job carried out by around 70 people at roughly 23:00 on the night of Pengerupukan, according to the 2023 account; Buleleng counted 16,178 lighting points in 2026. ATMs follow the same logic rather than a banking one: part of the BCA network in Denpasar and Kuta went dark at 21:00 on 18 March 2026 and came back on the morning of 20 March 2026, because a lit machine on a street is light. Mobile banking and BI-FAST transfers keep running. Draw the cash you want two days ahead, not on the eve.
Two cases, and the rule they actually show
On 19 March 2026, at around 07:15, pecalang stopped a 57-year-old American, Karl Adolf Amrhein, walking down a street with his luggage. Both his hotel booking in Ubud and his visa had run out. The case never reached a court; police helped him find a villa to stay in. That is the ordinary outcome of the ordinary mistake, and the reason we tell people to fix their accommodation dates before anything else.
The second case reads very differently. On 20 and 21 August 2026 the Denpasar district court sentenced a 26-year-old Swiss national, Luzian Andrin Zgraggen, to a year in prison, with judge Tjokorda Putra Budi Pastima presiding. The charge was not going outside as such. It was brought under the new criminal code, for insulting a religious observance: he went out against a direct warning from accommodation staff, filmed himself on an empty beach and posted the clip with an obscene caption. Held together, the two cases give the rule that matters. Walking out gets you walked back. Publicly mocking the observance is what gets prosecuted.
The people doing the stopping are pecalang, traditional village security, and their standing is set out in Bali Regional Regulation No. 4/2019, article 1 point 20 and article 47. They assist state security forces after coordinating with the Prajuru Desa Adat, and they are compensated with olih-olihan under village awig-awig rather than paid a salary. They are not police and they are not hotel staff, and arguing with them on the basis that they are neither is a poor plan. In 2026 the single exception to staying indoors was the takbir procession between 18:00 and 21:00, on foot and without amplifiers. Our safety, scams and health guide covers the wider question of who has authority over what in Bali.
Now our own position, because it is the part most operators blur. We do not run anything on Nyepi, and we do not take bookings for that date. This is not a recommendation or a weather call: movement by vehicle is prohibited for the whole 24 hours, so there is no private, discreet or early-morning version of a tour that we could legally drive. Anyone selling you one is selling something they cannot deliver.
The two days on either side are a different matter, and they are the good ones. The eve of Nyepi carries Melasti processions to the sea, the Tawur Kesanga offerings and the ogoh-ogoh parades in the evening, and the morning after is Ngembak Geni, when the island is working again and unusually quiet on the roads. Both are days for a private car with driver at $59 per car rather than a fixed itinerary, because processions close roads without notice and the plan has to bend around them. If you meet a Melasti column on its way to the water, the etiquette is simple and it matters: stand well back on the verge, leave the road to the sea clear, do not walk into the procession or in front of the carried effigies to photograph them, and let it pass before the car moves. Our drivers pull over and wait rather than edge through. One honest limit: Melasti and ogoh-ogoh dates are set village by village, and there is no single island-wide schedule to book against, so the route gets decided on the day by whoever is driving.
FAQ
What time does Nyepi start and end?
It runs 24 hours from 06:00 to 06:00 WITA. In 2026 that meant 06:00 on Thursday 19 March 2026 to 06:00 on Friday 20 March 2026, set out in the joint appeal published by FKUB Bali and Kanwil Kemenag on 6 March 2026. The date moves each year because Nyepi follows the Balinese calendar, so always check the year alongside the date.
Does Bali airport really close for Nyepi?
Yes, completely, under a NOTAM. In 2026 that was NOTAM A0096 covering 06:00 on 19 March 2026 to 06:00 on 20 March 2026, and airport management put the result at 440 flights cancelled, 231 domestic and 209 international, with 19 aircraft parked overnight on the apron. Medical evacuation and emergency flights are the only exceptions.
Can I fly out the morning Nyepi ends?
You can, but not at 06:00. In 2026 the first arrival was Citilink QG 692 from Surabaya at 06:52 and the first departure was QG 691 at 08:10, with Hongkong Airlines HX 706 following at 09:00. Departures cluster nearer 08:00 to 09:00, so give yourself two or three hours of slack before any onward connection.
Do ferries and fast boats stop for Nyepi?
They stop before the airport does and start after it. In 2026 Gilimanuk closed at 05:00 on 19 March 2026, Padangbai at 04:00 on 19 March 2026, and Ketapang on the Java side at 17:00 WIB on 18 March 2026. Padangbai did not reopen until 11:30 on 20 March 2026. Sanur harbour, which serves the Penida boats, does not operate on Nyepi at all.
Does the internet work during Nyepi in Bali?
Partly. Komdigi circular No. 2/2026 switches off mobile data, television and radio broadcast, and IPTV, while fixed-line internet, Wi-Fi over fibre, SMS and voice calls stay on. Hospitals, police, TNI, BMKG, BPBD, Basarnas and the fire service are exempt. In 2026 the shutdown was incomplete and the minister said it would be evaluated for the next Nyepi.
Can I check into a hotel on Nyepi?
No. Check-in and check-out are both prohibited on the day, which is why hotels enforce a minimum of two nights across the date. Book so that you arrive by the evening before at the latest and leave no earlier than the following morning. A one-night stay covering Nyepi is not something any property will sell.
What happens if a tourist goes outside during Nyepi?
Two documented cases show the range. An American stopped by pecalang on the street with his luggage at around 07:15 on 19 March 2026 was helped to find accommodation and never went to court. A Swiss visitor who ignored a direct warning, filmed himself on an empty beach and posted the clip with an obscene caption was sentenced to a year in prison in Denpasar on 20 and 21 August 2026, under the new criminal code, for insulting a religious observance.
When is Nyepi 2027?
Either 8 or 9 March 2027, and the sources disagree. The joint decree of three ministers that fixes Indonesia's national holiday calendar had not been issued as of August 2026, so no official date existed at that point. If your trip depends on it, hold the booking until the decree is published rather than trusting an aggregator.
