Quick Answer: Chick-fil-A Christmas Hours 2026

• Christmas Eve (Dec 24, 2026): Open, but closing early — typically between 6:00pm and 7:30pm
• Christmas Day (Dec 25, 2026): Closed. Every location. No exceptions.
•  Day After Christmas (Dec 26, 2026): Back to regular hours, roughly 6:30am to 9:00pm

That’s the Christmas Day closure isn’t just a random scheduling quirk.

Chick-fil-A Christmas Eve Hours — The Details

Chick-fil-A restaurants are open on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2026, but they don’t run their normal full-day schedule. Instead, most locations wrap up somewhere between 6:00pm and 7:30pm, giving staff time to get home for the evening rather than working a full closing shift on the 24th.

Day	Date	Status	Typical Hours
Christmas Eve	December 24, 2026	Open (Closes Early)	6:30am – 7:30pm
Christmas Day	December 25, 2026	Closed	—
Day After Christmas	December 26, 2026	Open (Regular Hours)	6:30am – 9:00pm

Now, that 7:30pm figure is a general average, not a hard rule across every single location. Mall-based and airport Chick-fil-A restaurants tend to close even earlier — sometimes as early as 6:00pm — because they’re tied to the operating hours of whatever larger facility they’re inside of. If your local Chick-fil-A happens to be in a shopping mall, don’t assume the standalone-restaurant hours apply; the mall’s own closing schedule is going to be the real constraint there, not Chick-fil-A’s own policy.

Menu Prices
Chick-fil-A Holiday
Chick-fil – A Breakfast Menu

Is Chick-fil-A Open on Christmas Day?

No. Flat out, no exceptions, every single U.S. location. This isn’t a “some stores might be open” situation the way a lot of holiday hours questions end up being — Christmas Day closure is universal across the entire chain.

The reasoning behind it ties back to the same philosophy that keeps Chick-fil-A closed every Sunday: giving team members a guaranteed day to spend with family rather than working around the clock, holiday or not. Whether or not that resonates with you personally, it’s been the standing policy for decades and there’s zero indication it’s changing anytime soon. If you’re planning a big Christmas Day meal and were hoping to grab nuggets as a backup, cross that plan off the list now and pick something else.

All locations reopen the following morning, December 26, running their regular hours — typically 6:30am to 9:00pm, same as any standard weekday.

Chick-fil-A Christmas Eve Menu — What’s Actually Available

Here’s something that trips people up: shortened hours don’t mean a shortened menu. Even with the early close on December 24, Chick-fil-A serves its complete standard lineup right up until closing time — breakfast in the morning, full lunch and dinner menu after that, no holiday-specific cutback on what you can order.

Menu Item	Calories	Price
Chicken Sandwich	420	$7.00
Spicy Chicken Sandwich	450	$7.29
Nuggets (8 ct)	250	$5.49
Grilled Chicken Sandwich	380	$7.29
Cool Wrap	660	$9.99
Waffle Potato Fries (Medium)	420	$3.59
Mac & Cheese (Medium)	450	$4.99
Cobb Salad	830	$12.09
Market Salad	550	$9.99
Spicy Southwest Salad	680	$13.99

Nothing here changes from a normal day — same prices, same calorie counts, same full menu. The only thing that’s different about Christmas Eve is the clock running out earlier than usual.

Planning a Christmas Eve Visit — What Actually Matters

If you’re specifically trying to grab a meal on December 24th, a few things are worth thinking through ahead of time rather than showing up and hoping for the best.

Go earlier than you normally would. 

With most locations wrapping up somewhere in the 6-to-7:30pm window instead of the usual 9pm, your safe margin shrinks a lot. If your plan was “grab dinner on the way home from last-minute shopping,” build in an extra buffer, because Christmas Eve traffic and shortened hours together are a bad combination for anyone cutting it close.

Expect it to be busier than a typical weeknight. 

Christmas Eve tends to draw a rush of people doing exactly what you’re doing — grabbing a quick, easy meal before the holiday takes over the kitchen for the next 24 hours. Lines run longer, both at the counter and the drive-thru, so factor that into your timing on top of the earlier close..

Order ahead through the app if you can

This isn’t just a nice-to-have on Christmas Eve specifically — it genuinely saves meaningful time when a location is both busier than normal and closing earlier than normal. Get your order in, skip the line, done.

Consider catering if you’re feeding a group

If Christmas Eve dinner for your family is turning into a bigger production than a quick drive-thru run, Chick-fil-A’s catering trays are worth looking into, though you’ll want to place that order well ahead of the 24th rather than same-day — catering orders generally need more lead time than a regular meal, and that’s before you factor in the holiday rush on top of it.

How to Check Your Specific Location’s Christmas Eve Hours

Everything above covers the general pattern, but “general pattern” isn’t the same as “your exact restaurant’s exact hours,” and given how much mall and airport locations can deviate, checking directly is worth the thirty seconds.

1.   Open the Chick-fil-A App

2.   Tap “Find a Restaurant” and allow location access

3.   Select your nearest location from the list

4.   Check the listed hours for dine-in, drive-thru, and any holiday-specific notes

You can also just search “Chick-fil-A near me” on Google Maps, which will usually surface live hours and can flag if a location has posted special holiday hours separate from its standard listing. Between the app and Google Maps, you’ve got two easy ways to confirm before making a special trip.

Chick-fil-A Holiday Hours Beyond Christmas

Christmas isn’t the only date where hours shift, and if you’re the type of person who plans ahead, here’s how the broader holiday picture looks for winter 2026:

Holiday	Date	Status	Typical Hours
Christmas Eve	December 24, 2026	Open (Closes Early)	6:30am – 7:30pm
Christmas Day	December 25, 2026	Closed	—
New Year’s Eve	December 31, 2026	Open (Closes Early)	6:30am – 7:30pm
New Year’s Day	January 1, 2027	Open	6:30am – 9:00pm

An interesting pattern here worth noting — New Year’s Eve follows basically the same shortened-hours treatment as Christmas Eve, closing early to let staff head into their own celebrations, but New Year’s Day itself stays open on regular hours, unlike Christmas Day which shuts down entirely. That’s a meaningful difference if you’re assuming all major holidays get treated identically by the company — they don’t. Sunday closures and Christmas Day are the two hard “closed, no exceptions” dates; everything else tends to be a modified-hours situation rather than a full closure.

A Few Things People Get Wrong About Christmas Eve Hours

Assuming every location closes at the exact same time. I’ve said this above but it’s worth repeating as its own point — standalone restaurants, mall locations, and airport locations can all have genuinely different closing times on the 24th. There’s no single universal cutoff beyond “earlier than usual.”

Waiting until the last minute to check hours. Given how much variation exists location to location, checking the day before — or even a few days before, if you’re planning something bigger like catering — beats trying to confirm hours while you’re already halfway there.

Assuming the drive-thru stays open later than dine-in on Christmas Eve. On a normal day, that’s usually true — the drive-thru often runs an hour past dine-in closing. On Christmas Eve specifically, that gap tends to shrink or disappear entirely, since the whole operation is winding down together ahead of the holiday. Don’t count on the drive-thru bailing you out if you’re running late.

Forgetting Christmas Day entirely when meal planning. This sounds obvious written out, but every year there’s someone who plans a Christmas Day gathering assuming they can grab a quick catering pickup or a few extra sandwiches that morning. You can’t. Get everything you need by the time Christmas Eve closes, because the door doesn’t open again until the 26th.

Why the Closures Exist At All

It’s worth understanding the reasoning here rather than just treating it as an arbitrary corporate rule, because it does actually shape how the whole holiday schedule works. Chick-fil-A’s founder built the company around a specific set of priorities that put family time and rest ahead of maximizing operating hours, and that philosophy shows up structurally — every Sunday, and specifically Christmas Day, are treated as non-negotiable closures rather than “optional, depends on local management” decisions.

The shortened hours on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve follow the same underlying logic in a softer form — not a full closure, but an acknowledgment that staff have somewhere to be that evening too.

You don’t have to agree with the philosophy to plan around it effectively, but understanding that it’s a deliberate, consistent policy — rather than random store-by-store scheduling — makes the whole thing easier to plan for rather than something you have to re-verify from scratch every single year.

Christmas Eve Catering — Worth the Extra Planning?

If your Christmas Eve tradition involves feeding more than just your immediate household — extended family stopping by, a neighborhood gathering, whatever your version of it looks like — catering trays are genuinely worth considering over trying to place a dozen individual orders at a busy counter. Chick-fil-A’s nugget and sandwich trays scale well for groups, and picking everything up in one organized order beats standing in a Christmas Eve line with half your family trying to remember who wanted what.

The catch, and it’s a real one: catering orders need lead time, and that lead time matters more around a major holiday than it would on a random Tuesday. Locations get slammed with holiday catering requests in the days leading up to Christmas Eve, so if this is part of your plan, get the order in as early as you reasonably can rather than trying to squeeze it in 48 hours out. Calling ahead or ordering through the app gives you a much better shot at getting your preferred pickup window than trying to sort it out last-minute on the 23rd or 24th.

Final Take

The short version, if you’re trying to remember this without rereading the whole thing next December: Chick-fil-A stays open on Christmas Eve but closes early, and shuts down completely on Christmas Day — a pattern that’s held steady for years and isn’t likely to change. Plan your visit earlier in the day on the 24th, check your specific location through the app since mall and airport hours can vary, and make sure whatever you need is picked up before that early close, because the doors won’t reopen until the 26th.

For the full year-round hours breakdown, the When Does Chick-fil-A Serve Lunch guide covers standard daily timing, and the Chick-fil-A Entrees Menu With Prices has the complete lineup if you’re planning what to order before the holiday closure hits.