It is a Sunday in Singapore and you are on your break, thumb moving through the family group chat. There they are back home, tito and the cousins at the family plot, repainting lola's name on the lapida, the little ones fighting over who carries the cooler. Somebody sends a photo of the first candle. You are in a stairwell off Orchard or a pantry in the east, and the whole gathering reaches you as pixels on a tired screen.
Undas is like that for us. Everyone comes together, and we come together through a phone. We cannot stand at the grave, so we send what we can, and for most of us that means padala. This year the padala needs a bit of planning, because Undas falls on a long weekend and the banks back home take the days off.
Look at the calendar first
Undas 2026 sits across three days. Saturday, 31 October is an ordinary weekend. Then come the two that carry the meaning: Sunday, 1 November for All Saints' Day, and Monday, 2 November for All Souls' Day. The Philippine government, in its 2026 holiday proclamation (Proclamation No. 1006), set both 1 and 2 November as special non-working days, and Malacañang said the added day gives families more time together and lifts local tourism.
For most of us in Singapore, none of this lands on our own calendar. Singapore does not mark Undas, so you clock in as usual on that Monday while your family back home is at the cemetery. The holiday that moves your padala is the one back home.
Why a long weekend touches your padala
On a special non-working day, the banks in the Philippines stay shut, and government offices close too. So on Monday, 2 November, the branch where your family would collect an over-the-counter remittance is dark, and the bank cannot run certain transfers until it reopens.
This is where the kind of padala matters. Money moving through InstaPay travels in real time, any hour, any day, weekends and holidays included, up to 50,000 pesos per transfer. Your padala to a GCash wallet or a bank account over InstaPay still lands while the cemetery candles burn. PESONet is the other rail, the one built for bigger amounts, and it settles only on banking days. A PESONet transfer you push over the long weekend sits in the queue and credits on the next banking day, which falls on Tuesday, 3 November.
So the padala that beats the holiday is the instant kind. The padala that waits is the bank-batch kind, and the cash pickup at a shuttered branch.
Time it so your family has it in hand
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Get the padala out early. If your family needs cash for candles, flowers, a jeep to the province and the food for the salo-salo, send it by Friday, 30 October. That way it clears while the banks are still open and nobody is refreshing the GCash app at midnight. Our guide on the cheapest way to send money home walks through where the padala shrinks before it ever reaches them.
Choose an instant channel. The remittance apps and the counters at Lucky Plaza that pay out to GCash or to a bank by InstaPay will move your money even on the Sunday and the Monday. If your usual padala goes by bank deposit for a larger amount, ask whether it rides PESONet, and if it does, send it before the weekend or wait for it on Tuesday.
Tell your family the plan. A short message saves a lot of worry: "Padala is in your GCash na, kunin niyo na bago kayo umalis papuntang sementeryo." The lola counting on that money for flowers should not be standing at a closed counter on All Souls' Day.
Keep a little buffer. Fees and the exchange rate shift during the ber-months when everyone is sending at once, so check the rate the day you send. If your pay only lands that same week, the same squeeze hit us around the late-August holidays, and planning a few days ahead took the sting out.
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If the dates or the rules shift
Holiday labels can change when the government issues an amended proclamation, and each bank sets its own cut-off for same-day processing. Before you send, check the official holiday list on the Official Gazette (officialgazette.gov.ph) and your remittance provider's cut-off for the day. If a transfer stalls, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas publishes how InstaPay and PESONet work, and your provider's support line can tell you which rail your padala took.
Pero huwag kang mabahala
We will not be at the lapida this year, again. We will not smell the melting wax or hear the tangle of the rosary over somebody's portable speaker. But the padala you send is you being there, in the only way the distance allows. It buys the candle with your name on it, the flowers lola likes, the extra ulam so the little ones remember the day as a happy one.
Send it early, send it instant, then text your nanay to light one for you. Enjoy your Sunday, kabayan. They know you remembered.
Photo: Manila North Cemetery gate, via Wikimedia Commons.
