A standard Power BI date table knows January to December and one weekend. A Gulf business runs on more than that: Ramadan and Eid move every year, the Hijri month decides the season, and the weekend depends on the country and the year. Miss one of these and the report shows trends that are really the calendar.

This guide builds one calendar table that gets all of it right, in DAX, in about a minute, and three measures that use it.

Four things a standard calendar gets wrong in the Gulf

  • Ramadan moves. It started on 1 March in 2025 and on 18 February in 2026, and is expected around 8 February in 2027: about 11 days earlier each year. March 2026 against March 2025 compares two different seasons.
  • Eid is a window, not a day. Shopping builds up in the days before Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, and those days fall in a different Gregorian month from one year to the next.
  • The weekend changed. The UAE moved its government weekend from Friday-Saturday to Saturday-Sunday on 1 January 2022 (announced by WAM). Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman keep Friday-Saturday. Whichever fixed weekend a UAE calendar uses, one side of 2022 is wrong: Saturday-Sunday makes Friday 31 December 2021 a working day, Friday-Saturday makes Friday 7 January 2022 a day off.
  • Names sort alphabetically. April comes before January, Friday before Monday, and the Hijri months in an order nobody uses, unless each name is sorted by its number.

Announced dates or the calculated calendar?

Power BI has no Hijri functions, so the calendar table has to carry the Hijri dates. The usual source is Umm al-Qura, Saudi Arabia's official calculated calendar. But Ramadan and the two Eids are set by moon sighting, and an announcement can differ from the calculation by a day.

We checked every UAE announcement from 2018 to 2026: 27 dates (the first day of Ramadan, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha in each year). 26 matched Umm al-Qura. One did not: Ramadan 2018 started on Thursday 17 May, not Wednesday 16 May. Every date and its source is in our sources file.

Dates from 2027 on are not announced yet. They are estimates, and a sighting can still move each one by a day, so the calendar flags them.

Build the calendar in a minute

Open the free DAX Calendar Table Generator and set three things:

  • Hijri dates, Ramadan and Eid: on.
  • Announced Ramadan and Eid dates (UAE): on. Ramadan, Shawwal and Dhu al-Hijjah start on the announced dates; every other month follows Umm al-Qura.
  • Weekend: your country. Each country's option knows the date its weekend changed.

Copy the DAX, then in Power BI Desktop choose Modeling → New table and paste it. Next to the usual year, quarter, month and fiscal columns, the table has these Gulf columns:

  • Hijri Year, Hijri Month Number, Hijri Day, Hijri Month Name, Hijri Date: the Hijri date of every day.
  • Is Ramadan and Ramadan Day (1 to 30), to compare Ramadan day by day.
  • Is Eid al-Fitr (1 to 3 Shawwal) and Is Eid al-Adha (10 to 13 Dhu al-Hijjah).
  • Is Estimated Date: TRUE on Ramadan and Eid days that are not announced yet.
  • Is Weekend and Is Working Day: the right weekend for each date.
  • Is After UAE Weekend Change (UAE only): TRUE from 1 January 2022, to split working-day trends at the change.

The weekend column is a plain IF on the date, so you can read it and change it. For the UAE:

Is Weekend =
IF (
    [Date] >= DATE ( 2022, 1, 1 ),
    WEEKDAY ( [Date], 1 ) IN { 7, 1 },        -- Saturday, Sunday
    IF (
        [Date] >= DATE ( 2006, 9, 1 ),
        WEEKDAY ( [Date], 1 ) IN { 6, 7 },    -- Friday, Saturday
        WEEKDAY ( [Date], 1 ) IN { 5, 6 }     -- Thursday, Friday
    )
)

Sort the names

Select Month Name and choose Column tools → Sort by column → Month Number. Do the same for Day Name with Day of Week, and for Hijri Month Name with Hijri Month Number. Then mark the table as a date table on Date and relate it to your fact table.

Three measures that use it

1. Ramadan day N against last year. The Last Ramadan measure from our Ramadan sales guide moves each Ramadan day in view one Hijri year back. Put Ramadan Day on the axis and day 5 meets day 5.

2. This Ramadan against last Ramadan. On a card filtered to a year, vs Last Ramadan % compares that year's Ramadan days with the same days of the Ramadan before. When a 30-day Ramadan follows a 29-day one, day 30 has no partner and adds nothing to last year's side.

3. The Eid window. The days before Eid often matter more than Eid itself. This measure adds up the 7 days before each Eid al-Fitr and its 3 days, for every Eid whose first day is in view:

Sales Eid al-Fitr Window =
VAR _DaysBefore = 7
VAR _EidDays = 3
VAR _Eids =
    SELECTCOLUMNS (
        FILTER ( 'Calendar', 'Calendar'[Hijri Month Number] = 10 && 'Calendar'[Hijri Day] = 1 ),
        "@Eid", 'Calendar'[Date]
    )
VAR _Window =
    FILTER (
        ALL ( 'Calendar'[Date] ),
        VAR _Day = 'Calendar'[Date]
        RETURN
            NOT ISEMPTY (
                FILTER ( _Eids, _Day >= [@Eid] - _DaysBefore && _Day <= [@Eid] + _EidDays - 1 )
            )
    )
RETURN
    IF (
        NOT ISEMPTY ( _Eids ),
        CALCULATE ( [Total Sales], REMOVEFILTERS ( 'Calendar' ), _Window )
    )

Eid al-Fitr 2025 fell on Sunday 30 March, so its window runs from 23 March to 1 April and belongs to March: a visual by month shows the whole window in March and a blank in April. The DAX Measure Builder writes this measure with your own table and column names, together with the same for Eid al-Adha, last year's window and the % change.

We test these measures on a made-up model (two stores, amounts from a formula, no real data). Its 40 checks, each with the number worked out beforehand, are on GitHub, so you can run them in your own Power BI Desktop.

Three things to watch

  • Your company's weekend. The country options follow the official government weekend. Many private companies keep another one, and Sharjah's government has had a Friday-to-Sunday weekend since 2022. If yours differs, pick the fixed weekend that matches it.
  • Update after each announcement. When Ramadan 2027 is announced, generate the table again: the announced dates replace the estimates.
  • Other countries' sightings. The announced dates are the UAE's. A country that relies on its own sighting can start a day apart, so check the official announcement where you report.

Ramadan 1448 is expected around 8 February 2027. Build the calendar now, and the first comparison is ready on day one.