Is the LCBO open on Labour Day? Short answer: no — every store in Ontario is closed on Monday, September 7, 2026. This one is a real closure, not a rumour, and it's the opposite of the long weekend a month earlier.
That's the part worth sitting with. In August, the Civic Holiday Monday had everyone braced for locked doors that never came. In September, the doors genuinely lock — and the same people who over-prepared for August tend to under-prepare for this one. Here's what actually closes, the one retail option that stays open and almost nobody expects, and the deadline that ends the weekend before the Monday does.
The short answer, on one line
Monday, September 7, 2026 — every LCBO in Ontario is closed. Not reduced hours, not select stores. Closed, province-wide, all day.
The Beer Store is the exception. In recent years it has opened a few dozen select locations on Labour Day Monday, typically 11 AM to 6 PM — 82 stores in 2025. It announces the list each August, so confirm yours on the Beer Store locator before you drive anywhere.
The next Labour Day is Monday, September 6, 2027, and the LCBO will be closed then too. It always is, for a reason that isn't a scheduling choice.
Why Labour Day closes the LCBO — and Civic Holiday doesn't
A month ago the answer was yes. Now it's no. The difference isn't the LCBO changing its mind — it's that these two Mondays sit on opposite sides of a law.
Labour Day is a statutory holiday in Ontario. It's one of the nine public holidays under the Employment Standards Act, and — more to the point here — one of the days listed in the Retail Business Holidays Act, which legally requires most retail to close. The Civic Holiday isn't on either list; it's a municipal holiday each city opts into, which is exactly why the LCBO stays open for it. We laid that out in full in Is the LCBO Open on Civic Holiday?
So: same shape of long weekend, opposite retail reality. August's Monday is a shopping day. September's is not.
And it survived the 2026 amendment. This matters, because Ontario did change the Act in 2026 — Family Day and Victoria Day came off the mandatory-closure list entirely, and the LCBO responded by opening 304 stores on Victoria Day that May. It would be reasonable to assume Labour Day loosened up too.
It didn't. The amendment applied to Family Day and Victoria Day only. Labour Day sits with Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Canada Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day on the seven days that still close retail by law. Every one of those dates for the rest of 2026 and all of 2027 is in our LCBO holiday hours calendar.
The Beer Store is open — and most guides say it isn't
Here's the genuinely useful thing about this particular Monday, and the detail that gets printed wrong more than any other.
The Beer Store does not treat every closure day the same way. On some of the seven it shuts completely; on others it opens a limited slate of stores. Labour Day has been in the second group since 2019:
| Closure holiday | The Beer Store |
|---|---|
| New Year's Day | All closed |
| Good Friday | All closed |
| Easter Sunday | All closed |
| Canada Day | Select stores open |
| Labour Day | Select stores open, ~11 AM–6 PM |
| Thanksgiving Monday | All closed |
| Christmas Day | All closed |
So on Labour Day Monday you are not entirely without retail — you have beer, in a limited number of stores, for seven hours in the middle of the day. That's a meaningfully better position than Thanksgiving Monday, when both chains go dark together.
Two caveats before you count on it. It's select stores, not all of them — 82 out of roughly 400 in 2025, so the locator isn't optional. And it's beer, cider, and coolers only; the Beer Store has never carried spirits, which brings us to the limit that actually shapes the weekend.
The real deadline: Sunday, September 6 at 6 PM
Now the part that ends more Labour Day weekends than the Monday closure does.
Everybody eventually finds out the LCBO is closed Monday — they check, or someone tells them, and they adjust. What catches people is the Sunday. September 6 runs ordinary Sunday hours, which across almost all of Ontario means the LCBO closes at 6 PM. The Beer Store closes around the same time.
Sunday of a long weekend feels like a Saturday. Nobody works Monday, the barbecue is still going, and the day behaves like the middle of the weekend rather than the end of the retail week. But retail treats it as a Sunday and shuts at six — and on this particular weekend, 6 PM Sunday is the last time you can legally buy spirits over a counter until Tuesday morning.
Lay the three days out and the shape is obvious:
| Day | LCBO | The Beer Store | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sat, Sep 5 | Normal hours | Normal hours | Your real shopping day |
| Sun, Sep 6 | Closes 6 PM | Closes ~6 PM | Last call for spirits, all weekend |
| Mon, Sep 7 | CLOSED | Select stores, 11 AM–6 PM | Beer only, limited locations |
Two nights of the long weekend fall entirely outside those windows. That's the gap.
"Corner stores sell alcohol now" — how far that gets you
Since 2024, licensed convenience, grocery, and big-box stores across Ontario have sold beer, wine, cider, coolers, and ready-to-drink cocktails. On a Monday when the LCBO is dark, that's a real backstop — and on Labour Day it's the option with the longest hours of anything on this page.
Three limits decide whether it saves your weekend:
- No spirits. At any hour, at any store. Vodka, whisky, rum, gin, and tequila are LCBO-only in Ontario, and the 2024 expansion deliberately left that carve-out in place. If Monday's plan involves cocktails, the corner store cannot help you — and the LCBO has been closed since Saturday night.
- Sales stop at 11 PM. Later than everything else on the long weekend, but a hard stop.
- There's a 7.1% ABV ceiling. That quietly rules out a lot of stronger craft beer and most fortified wine. The full breakdown is in buying alcohol at Ontario convenience stores.
The honest summary for September 5–7: beer and wine until 11 PM all three nights, spirits only until 6 PM Sunday.
Long-weekend stock-up math: buy Saturday, buy once
The fix is unglamorous and it works: treat Saturday, September 5 as your only real shopping day and buy for three nights, not for tonight.
Use the standard host formula — total drinks = guests × (1 + hours) — per night, then add the nights together. Twelve people over a four-hour Sunday afternoon is 12 × 5 = 60 drinks, and that's one day of three.
A workable split for a group of 10–12 across the whole weekend:
| What | Roughly how much | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Beer | 2 cases (48) | Highest volume, all three days — and the only thing you can top up on Monday |
| Wine | 4–6 bottles | Sunday dinner; whites go fastest in early-September heat |
| One spirit + mixers | 1–2 bottles | Buy Saturday or not at all — no second chance after 6 PM Sunday |
| RTDs / coolers | 12–24 | Cold, easy, no mixing, and corner-store legal until 11 PM |
| Ice, limes, soda | More than you think | The most-forgotten items of any long weekend |
Then overshoot. Long weekends run longer than regular ones — that's the point of them — and the standard mistake is buying a normal Saturday's worth for a three-night stretch. Counts by party size are in How Much Alcohol to Buy for a Party.
Two rules that save this specific weekend:
- Buy the spirits Saturday. Sunday closes at 6, Monday's LCBO never opens, and no corner store or Beer Store in the province will sell you a bottle of tequila at any point in between. This is the one item with no backup plan.
- Don't count on the Monday Beer Store. It might be open, it might be 20 minutes away, and it closes at 6 PM. Treat it as a bonus, not a plan.
When you run short anyway: Monday night
You did the math, you bought Saturday, and it's still Monday evening with people in the backyard and nothing left but half a case of light beer.
By then every option on this page has closed. The LCBO never opened. The select Beer Store shut at 6. The corner store has beer until 11 and no spirits at all. That's the window licensed delivery exists for — a real menu brought to the door, ID checked on the step, usually in under 60 minutes.
Ontario licenses liquor delivery between 9 AM and 11 PM, every day of the year — Labour Day included. Worth being precise about what that means, because the internet is full of noise on it: ordering runs around the clock, but the bottle legally arrives inside that window. Anyone advertising 24/7 alcohol delivery in Ontario is describing something the province doesn't license. The full version is in how late you can actually get alcohol delivered.
The thing that makes it different from the corner store on this particular Monday isn't convenience — it's spirits. It's the only option on Labour Day that carries them.
We run the whole long weekend, Monday included:
- Hamilton and the mountain — downtown, James Street North, Hess Village, Westdale, plus Ancaster and Dundas. See Hamilton coverage.
- Niagara Falls — Fallsview, Clifton Hill, and the north end, on the last big tourist weekend of the summer. See Niagara Falls coverage.
- St. Catharines, Burlington, Stoney Creek, and Welland — full primary-zone service.
- The Queensway — Stonegate, Mimico, and the south-Etobicoke waterfront.
Because it's a real warehouse rather than a cooler, you get what no open door in the province offers on Labour Day Monday: cold beer by the case, chilled wine, and the full spirits shelf. The beer, wine, vodka, whiskey, and tequila menus are what's in the building tonight.
FAQ — Labour Day and the September long weekend
Is the LCBO open on Labour Day 2026? No. Every LCBO in Ontario is closed on Monday, September 7, 2026. Labour Day is one of seven days that legally require retail closure under the Retail Business Holidays Act, and it was not affected by the province's 2026 amendment.
Is the Beer Store open on Labour Day? Select locations, yes — typically 11 AM to 6 PM. The Beer Store has opened a limited slate on Labour Day Monday since 2019 (82 stores in 2025) and publishes the list each August. Check the store locator before driving.
Is Labour Day a statutory holiday in Ontario? Yes. It's one of Ontario's nine public holidays under the Employment Standards Act and one of the seven retail-closure days under the Retail Business Holidays Act — which is precisely why the LCBO shuts, unlike on the August Civic Holiday.
What time does the LCBO close on the Sunday of the Labour Day weekend? 6 PM at most stores on Sunday, September 6. It's the most-missed deadline of the weekend and the last over-the-counter spirits sale until Tuesday.
Can I buy vodka or tequila anywhere on Labour Day? Not in a store. Spirits are LCBO-only in Ontario, the LCBO is closed, and neither the Beer Store nor licensed convenience stores carry them at any hour. Licensed delivery is the only spirits option that operates on the day, 9 AM–11 PM.
When is the next Labour Day? Monday, September 6, 2027 — and the LCBO will be closed then too. Every closure date for both years is in our holiday hours calendar.
The one thing to take away
August's long weekend punished people for expecting a closure. September's punishes them for expecting the opposite — because the Monday everyone eventually checks isn't the deadline that gets them. Sunday, September 6 at 6 PM is.
Buy the spirits Saturday. Treat the Monday Beer Store as a bonus. And when the third night runs longer than the third night was supposed to, we're open — call 416-627-7846, 9 AM to 11 PM, Labour Day included.
