Panda Express Hours: Opening, Closing & Holiday Times (2026)

What are Panda Express hours?

Most Panda Express restaurants open between 10:30 and 11 a.m. and close between 9 and 9:30 p.m., every day of the week. Those were the posted hours at the street-side stores we checked in November 2026, from a storefront on Jamaica Avenue in Queens, N.Y., to a standalone restaurant on Holcomb Bridge Road in Alpharetta, Ga.

Panda Express does not publish one national schedule, and each store sets its own hours. The spread is wide. A store on the Las Vegas Strip lists 9:30 a.m. to 2 a.m., while a campus location in Kentucky closes at 4 p.m. on weekdays and does not open on weekends.

Weekends can run a little later. The Alpharetta store stays open until 9:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, half an hour past its weeknight close. The table below shows every store we sampled and where the hours came from.

What time does Panda Express open?

Plan on 10:30 or 11 a.m. at a typical Panda Express. The full lunch and dinner menu is served from the moment the doors open, because most locations do not serve breakfast, so there is no morning menu or changeover to wait out.

A few stores start earlier. The Harmon Corner store on the Las Vegas Strip lists a 9:30 a.m. opening, and food-court stores tend to open when their mall, airport or student union does. If you want an early lunch, the safest move is to look up your exact store rather than assume 10:30.

Comparing chains for a morning stop? Our fast food breakfast hours guide lists which chains serve breakfast and until what time.

When does Panda Express close, and is it open late?

Most Panda Express stores close at 9 or 9:30 p.m., which makes it an early-dinner stop rather than a late-night one. If you are heading out after 9 p.m., check first, because a store that closes at 9 will not be serving at 9:15.

The exceptions sit in busy tourist and entertainment areas. The Harmon Corner location on the Las Vegas Strip lists 2 a.m. closing every night, though its listing warns that the kitchen may not always be open during business hours.

A practical test: if the Panda Express app will not let you pick a pickup time for today at your store, it is probably closed or close to closing. Look at a second nearby store before giving up, since two stores in the same town can keep different hours.

Why are some Panda Express hours so different?

Location type explains most of the gap. Street-side and drive-thru stores set their own schedules and usually run from late morning to evening. Stores inside malls, airports, stadiums and colleges follow the hours of the building they sit in.

Campus stores are the clearest example. The Panda Express at Western Kentucky University's Helm Library commons posts fall 2026 hours of 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on Friday, and closed on weekends. The University of Hawaii at Manoa's campus Panda Express lists 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on weekdays. Expect campus stores to change hours during breaks and summer.

Military bases add another layer. If you are looking for a Panda Express on an installation such as Joint Base Andrews, the Panda store list we checked did not include one there, so use the installation's exchange or dining directory instead. You will also need base access to get in.

Is Panda Express open right now?

If it is between about 11 a.m. and 9 p.m. on a regular day, your nearest street-side Panda Express is very likely open. Outside that window, or on a holiday, check before you go.

The most direct check is the Panda Express app or the store locator on pandaexpress.com, which show hours for each store. Map listings and third-party pages are handy but can be out of date. We found one shopping-center listing with Sunday hours that could not be right, so treat any single listing with some caution.

Delivery apps are a separate case. DoorDash and Uber Eats show their own ordering windows, which may not match the dining room. Ordering ahead in the Panda Express app also shows you your store's exact prices; see the Panda Express menu for typical prices and our plate sizes guide for what each meal size gets you.

Is the new Panda Express near you open yet?

The quickest sign that a new Panda Express is open is that it appears in the Panda Express app or store locator and lets you place an order. A store that is still being built usually is not orderable yet.

To answer the most common questions, we checked a snapshot of Panda's own online store list from Oct. 24, 2026, collected by the open-data project All the Places. It held about 2,465 locations in the U.S. and its territories, covering 49 states (all but Vermont), Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and Guam. California led with 597 stores and Texas followed with 322.

The table below shows towns people often ask about. A listing means Panda's ordering system had the store on that date. It does not tell you today's hours, so confirm those in the app.

What are Panda Express holiday hours?

Panda Express does not post a national holiday schedule, so holiday hours are set store by store. Here is what we could confirm.

• Thanksgiving (Thursday, Nov. 26, 2026): plan on closed. FOX 2 Detroit listed Panda Express as closed on Thanksgiving 2025. Eat there on Wednesday or Friday instead, or see which fast food restaurants are open on Thanksgiving.
• Christmas Day (Friday, Dec. 25, 2026): it depends on your store. Cheapism, updated in October 2025, reported that select Panda Express locations open on Christmas with reduced hours, and Hip2Save noted in December 2025 that the decision is made locally.
• Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day and Easter: we could not find a reliable report for these days, so check your store in the app a day ahead.

Mall and airport stores follow their building's holiday hours, which often means a late opening or early close.