Today is Día de la Madre, and it is a full national holiday in Costa Rica, not just a greeting-card occasion. Public offices are shut, most bank branches are closed, and if you were planning to sort out any paperwork before Monday, that plan is gone. The date does not move. Costa Rica marks Mother’s Day on August 15 every year, unlike the United States, Canada and Mexico, where it falls in May. Newcomers routinely miss it because they are watching for a date in spring.
It also does not get shifted to the nearest Monday. Costa Rica applies no holiday transfers in 2026, so every holiday this year lands on its actual calendar date. Because August 15 is a Saturday, most people on a Monday-to-Friday schedule get no extra day off at all. That matters more than it sounds. If you work Saturdays, today is a holiday you are entitled to, and the pay rules are specific.
If you do not work, you receive your normal pay. If you do work, you are owed double. Any overtime on top of that carries a further 50 percent surcharge on the double-time hour, which is where the familiar “triple pay” figure comes from. How the base pay lands depends on how you are paid.
If your salary is monthly, fortnightly, or weekly in a commercial activity, the holiday is already built into what you receive. Work it, and your employer adds one more day’s ordinary pay to make up the double. In non-commercial work paid weekly or by the hour, the holiday day is paid on top of the days you actually worked.
There is also a rule most people never hear about. Article 149 of the Labor Code prohibits employers from having staff work on holidays at all. The exceptions in Articles 150 and 151 cover activities that cannot simply stop — the reason your local soda is open and the Registro Nacional is not. If your employer asked you in today and you are not in one of those categories, the law was on your side to decline.
Practically, expect the day to feel like a Sunday with more traffic. Restaurants are booked solid; this is one of the busiest dining days of the year here, and walking in without a reservation at lunchtime is optimistic. Many shops open on reduced hours rather than closing outright, so call ahead rather than driving out.
The roads are the part worth planning around. Holiday traffic is heavy today, and it is landing on the same day Tropical Wave 32 crosses the country. The Caribbean slope and Northern Zone are under yellow alert, with rain from early morning and gusts reaching 85 kilometres per hour (53 miles per hour) in the mountains. If you are driving to see family, leave early, check that your route is open, and build in more time than the distance suggests.
One more thing worth checking before the day gets away from you. If you employ anyone — a domestic worker, a gardener, a caretaker — today is a mandatory-pay holiday for them as well, whether or not they come in.
The fixed date is the giveaway to the holiday’s origins. August 15 is the Feast of the Assumption on the Catholic calendar, and Costa Rica folded the civic celebration onto the religious one rather than inventing a floating spring date. That is why the country marks it in the middle of the rainy season, and why almost every family here has a plan B for lunch under a roof.
