Bank Unions To Go On Nationwide Strike on January 27: Are Banks Open On Tuesday?

The United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU), an umbrella for bank unions, has decided to go on a nationwide strike on January 27, 2026. The strike was called to press for their long-pending demands to change to a five-day workweek.

Next week being a holiday-shortened week due to holiday on January 26 on the occasion of Republic Day, a strike on January 27 could disrupt banking operations across public sector banks for four consecutive days.

At present, bank employees get holidays on every Saturday of the month, along with Sundays. Bank employees are demanding every Saturday to be declared a bank holiday. This decision was agreed between the Indian Banks' Association and UFBU during the revision of wage settlement in March 2024. "It is unfortunate that the government is not responding to our genuine demand. There would be no loss of man-hours as we have agreed to work an extra 40 minutes daily from Monday to Friday," UFBU had said earlier this month.

The organisation has now served a strike notice for January 27. “Besides representatives of IBA and various banks, representatives of DFS, the Ministry of Finance, were present. From UFBU, all our nine unions were present. Despite detailed discussions, finally there was no positive outcome out of the conciliation proceedings," UFBU said in a statement to PTI. 

Are Banks Open On January 27

Banks are already closed from January 24-26, due to the weekend and January 26 being Republic Day. In some states banks were closed on January 23, on the occasion of the birthday anniversary of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’, along with Basant Panchami, Saraswati Puja, and Vir Surendrasai Jayanti also falling on the same day.

If the strike goes through, banking operations will be disrupted for the fourth consecutive day in most states, with five consecutive days of disruption in a few states. 

So far there has been no official comment from the Indian Banks’ Association or the Reserve Bank of India. However, if the strike goes ahead, some disruptions could be faced in public sector banking operations.