Every year around this time we get the same email, usually from a buyer in Europe or South America: "Are you closed for the whole of October?" The short answer is no. But the 2026 calendar is genuinely awkward, and if you plan around it the wrong way you can lose three weeks on a delivery that should have taken ten days.
So here are the actual dates, what we can and cannot do on each of them, and the order cut-offs that matter if you need parts on a vessel before the yards get busy.
Our 2026 holiday dates
China's State Council published the 2026 public holiday calendar in November last year. Two holidays fall close together this autumn, but they are not one continuous block:
| Dates | Status | What happens in our factory and office |
| Sep 25 (Fri) – Sep 27 (Sun) | Mid-Autumn Festival - closed, 3 days | Production stopped. No shipping, no loading. |
| Sep 28 (Mon) – Sep 30 (Wed) | Normal working days | Full production, full office, shipping as usual. |
| Oct 1 (Thu) – Oct 7 (Wed) | National Day - closed, 7 days | Production stopped. Customs brokers and most forwarders also closed. |
| Oct 8 (Thu) | Back to work - full operation | Machining, heat treatment, inspection and shipping all resume. |
Two more dates, because they confuse people who track our working calendar: Sunday Sep 20 and Saturday Oct 10 are official make-up working days in China. Our office is staffed on both. If you emailed us on Sunday Sep 20 and got a reply, that is why.
The three-day window in the middle is the part most buyers miss
September 28, 29 and 30 are ordinary working days. Three of them. That window is the single most useful thing in this notice, and almost nobody uses it, because buyers assume the two holidays are joined into a thirteen-day shutdown and simply stop sending POs on September 24.
What we can realistically finish in those three days:
- Pick, pack and ship anything already in stock - standard sprockets, ANSI and BS/ISO roller chain, HTD and AT-series timing pulleys in common bores, HGR15 and HGR20 rail with carriages.
- Secondary machining on semi-finished stock: boring to your shaft size, cutting keyways, drilling set-screw holes. On a finished-bore sprocket this is usually a one-day job, not a one-week job.
- Cut rail and gear rack to your stroke length and drill mounting holes.
- Final inspection and paperwork - packing list, invoice, certificate of origin, dimensional report.
What we will not pretend to finish in three days: a new carburized spiral bevel gear set. Module 1.0 to 15.0, 20CrMnTi, carburize and quench, then grind back to DIN 5–8 after heat-treatment distortion. That process has a fixed clock and the furnace does not care about your deadline. If it has not started by now, it starts October 8.
Order cut-offs, stated plainly
These are payment-cleared dates, not PO dates. Our warehouse releases against cleared funds, and a T/T from Europe or Latin America can take two to three banking days to land.
To ship before September 25
Payment must clear by Tuesday September 23. Stock items only.
To ship in the September 28–30 window
Payment cleared by Monday September 28 for stock items. For light secondary machining, we need the PO and your bore and keyway dimensions by Wednesday September 24 so the work order is queued before the first closure - then it runs on the 28th.
Everything else
Production starts October 8. Send the drawing now anyway. Our engineers review specifications during the break, so if there is a problem with a tolerance or a preload class you hear about it before the machines start, not two weeks later.
Freight is where you will actually lose time, not our factory
This is worth saying bluntly because it costs our customers more money than our holiday does. During National Day week, customs brokers, trucking companies and most forwarder offices are also closed. Tianjin Port keeps running, but documentation stops moving.
Then the first two weeks of October get crowded. Everyone who paused for Golden Week releases their bookings at once, space tightens, and rolled containers are normal. If your delivery is time-critical:
- Book space with your forwarder this week, before the 25th. Do not wait until October 8.
- If you are on LCL and the volume is small, compare air freight honestly. For a set of timing pulleys or a few metres of rail, the freight difference is often smaller than a two-week delay costs you in machine downtime.
- Send us your consignee details and any special document requirements now, while the office is fully staffed.
What we handle while the plant is closed
The plant stops. Sales and engineering do not go completely dark.
We can: answer technical questions, quote, check whether a model number is something we stock, review your drawing, confirm a preload class or accuracy grade, and tell you honestly what the October lead time looks like.
We cannot: ship, load, run a heat-treatment batch, issue a fresh third-party material test report, or clear customs.
Expect a reply within 24 hours on working days, and within about 48 hours during the closures. If it is urgent, WhatsApp reaches us faster than email.
Three situations we see every October
Sliding gate opener assemblers. Q4 is your season and rack is your bottleneck. If you are running steel rack and thinking about switching, decide before the 25th - the steel versus nylon comparison covers the trade-off, and 4-eye and 6-eye gate rack is a stock item we can still move in the September 28–30 window.
CNC router and gantry builders. Long-travel racks get joined from multiple sections, and joint accuracy is where the errors stack up. Read how to install and join long gear racks before you order, because getting the section count wrong means reordering, and a reorder now means October 8.
Conveyor and packaging line maintenance. If a chain is near its wear limit, do not gamble on it surviving until late October. Measure it - this elongation guide takes ten minutes with a tape measure. If you are past 1.5 percent elongation, order the replacement this week while sprockets and chain are both on the shelf.
Contact us during the holiday
Email: sales@tjond.com
Phone / WhatsApp / WeChat: +86 136 2214 6972
Tel: +86 022 8780 6500
Address: No. 9 Tengwang Road, Beichen District, Tianjin 300401, China
Include your model number, quantity and required delivery date in the first message. It saves a round trip and gets you a real answer instead of a request for more information.
To everyone celebrating with us - the Mid-Autumn Festival is the one where families share mooncakes and look at the full moon, and our staff will be doing exactly that. Thank you for working with us this year. We will see you on October 8 with the machines running.
Tianjin OuNaiDa Transmissions Technology Co., Ltd. - gears, gear racks, sprockets, transmission chain, pulleys, couplings, linear guideways and ball screws. Twenty years of manufacturing, fifteen years of export.
