Claim: A holiday has been announced for 23 September 2025 and a notification issued in this regard, according to Pakistani media outlets.
Fact: No holiday has been announced in Pakistan for 23 September 2025. The news reports by Pakistani media outlets are actually about the 95th Saudi National Day, but they carry misleading, clickbait headlines.
A number of Pakistani media outlets have recently published reports and social media posts claiming that a public holiday has been announced on 23 September 2025.
While there’s no mention of what the holiday is for or where it was announced, headlines and captions such as the one below were used in the news reports and posts:
“23 ستمبر کو عام تعطیل کا اعلان حکومت نے نوٹیفکیشن جاری کردیا
[Public holiday declared on September 23, government issues notification]”
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check scoured the list of holidays in 2025 published by the Pakistani government’s Cabinet Division on 23 December 2024 and found no mention of one on 23 September 2025.
In a list available on the “Office Time and Holidays” page of the website of Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry, 22 September is mentioned as Equinox, a “Season,” not as a holiday.
We then checked what the body of these news reports state and found that all of them are about a holiday in Saudi Arabia. None of them have provided any “notification”.
The Saudi National Day is commemorated on 23 September to mark the late King Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud’s decision to rename the regions of Najd and Hejaz as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through a royal decree in 1932.
According to a 7 September 2025 report by the Saudi Press Agency (SPA), the “declaration of the unification of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia [was made] on September 19, 1932”. The country’s first king had “designated September 23 as the official National Day to be celebrated annually in commemoration of this pivotal moment in the nation’s history”, it added.
The Saudi Foreign Ministry notes that the country’s emblem, depicting two crossing swords and a datepalm, as well as its flag — comprising the words of the Islamic declaration of faith, also known as the First Kalma or Kalima Tayyab, in a green rectangle — were also chosen during King Abdulaziz’s tenure.
The Saudi National Day “was first celebrated in 1965 under King Faisal and became a permanent holiday in 2005 following a royal decree by King Abdullah”, Al Arabiya reported, adding that every year, “public and private sector employees are given the day off, with schools, banks, and government offices closed”.
This year — 2025 — Saudi Arabia will mark its 95th National Day with the theme “Pride in Our Nature,” as announced by Turki Alalshikh, the chairperson of the General Entertainment Authority (GEA) and the Saudi Boxing Federation.
Soch Fact Check, therefore, concludes that there is no public holiday on 23 September 2025 in Pakistan and that local media outlets used clickbait headlines to mislead people.
Virality
Among the news channels that published clickbait headlines were Pakistan Observer, 24 News Digital Urdu, Express News, BOL News and its breaking news Facebook page ‘BOL News Breakings’, HUM News, Daily Ausaf, and GTV News HD.
The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ), Nari Development Organization (NDO), Pakistan Association for Mental Health (PAMH), and the National Trust for Population Welfare (NATPOW) also apparently posted the clickbait; however, it is unclear whether these websites authentically represent the aforementioned bodies.
Soch Fact Check found the claim circulating here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here on Facebook.
It was also shared here on Instagram and here, here, here, here, here, and here on X (formerly Twitter).
Conclusion: No holiday has been announced in Pakistan for 23 September 2025. The news reports by Pakistani media outlets are actually about the 95th Saudi National Day, but they carry misleading clickbait headlines.
Background image in cover photo: Akhilesh Sharma
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