NSE trading hours and holidays

The trading day

There is no lunch break and no after-hours session for retail investors. An order placed at 6 pm through an app is held by the broker until the next session opens. The times are set by Rule 6.1 of the NSE Equity Trading Rules↗. Times are East Africa Time, UTC+3, and Kenya does not change its clocks.

One rule from the August 2025 changes also shapes the day: any quantity of shares trades on the one main board, so single-share orders join the same queue as everyone else's. On a day when a share does not trade at all, or trades fewer than 100 shares in total, the previous average price carries over as its reference price (Rules 7.6.5 and 7.6.6).

When KenyaStocks updates

KenyaStocks is an end-of-day site: every price is the close of a trading session, not a live quote. During the session the prices here are the previous close.

On a public holiday nothing changes: the close from the last trading day stays until the next session ends. A quiet Monday after a long weekend will therefore show Friday's date until Monday evening.

Public holidays in 2026

The exchange closes on every gazetted public holiday. Kenya has twelve, eight on fixed dates and four that move: Good Friday and Easter Monday follow Easter, and the two Eid holidays follow the sighting of the moon and are gazetted a few days ahead. The 2026 dates below are from Office Holidays; the Eid dates are the gazetted ones for this year.

The Sunday rule

Under Kenya's Public Holidays Act, when a public holiday falls on a Sunday the following Monday is observed as the holiday, and the exchange closes on that Monday (section 4 of the Public Holidays Act, Cap. 110↗). A holiday that falls on a Saturday does not move. In 2026 three holidays land on Saturdays (Mazingira Day, Jamhuri Day and Boxing Day) and none on a Sunday, so there are no substitute Mondays this year. In 2027 Jamhuri Day falls on a Sunday, so Monday 13 December 2027 will be a closed day.

What a holiday does to settlement

The NSE settles on T+3 in working days. Weekends and public holidays do not count, so a holiday inside the window pushes settlement out by a day. A share bought on Thursday 2 April 2026 would normally settle on Tuesday 7 April; with Good Friday and Easter Monday closed, it settles on Thursday 9 April. The same applies to money from a sale.

This matters most around dividend book closures. To be on the register on a book closure date you need the purchase to have settled, so the last day to buy is three working days earlier, and a holiday in between moves that day back too. The arithmetic is in How dividends work in Kenya.

The session in other time zones

For Kenyans abroad the session sits in the morning or the small hours. Kenya stays on UTC+3 all year, so the shift changes when the other country moves its clocks.

Most broker apps accept orders outside the session and queue them for the next session, so trading from another time zone does not require being awake at 9.00 am Nairobi time. The diaspora path is in Buying NSE shares from abroad.