Qatar’s schoolchildren will be handed a nearly 40-day holiday during next year’s World Cup, according to an official school calendar announced on Monday.
The holiday will take place from November 16 to December 25 and is more than treble the 12-day break given at the same time last year.
The 2022 World Cup starts on November 21 and finishes on December 18.
Qatar’s end-of-year holiday is from November 20 to December 22, but pupils will be dismissed after first-term exams on November 16 and they will not resume classes until December 25, education authorities said.
The extended holiday will ease traffic congestion at a time when 1.2 million fans are expected to descend on the capital Doha, Qatar’s only big city and host of the first World Cup in the Middle East.
The Qatar World Cup was moved to the winter months to avoid the punishing summer heat of the Gulf country when temperatures top 40 degrees Celsius.
