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How to find and read South Africa's Government Gazettes here, and keep up with new ones. Everything on Gazette Finder is free, and reading and searching need no account.

Finding a gazette

Search. Type words into the search box at the top of any page — liquor licence, voting stations — and press Search. A gazette is found when every word is in it; put words in quotes ("municipal elections") to find them together, and type or between two words to find either. A gazette's number on its own — 55525 — opens that gazette. An English word also finds its paired Afrikaans term, and the other way round; the results say when they did, with a link to search only the words you typed.

The list. The front page lists every gazette held, newest first, under the day it was published. Narrow it by the kind of gazette, the authority that issued it ("Issued by"), the year and the month, or step through the row of dates; each choice shows as a chip that clears it. A narrowed list has a search box of its own that searches within it. Choose 24, 48 or 96 gazettes a page.

The menus. Gazettes opens the whole list, one kind of gazette, or the feed. Authorities opens the authorities page at a group — the Presidency, Parliament, the Chapter 9 institutions, the national departments and the rest. Legislation opens the gazettes concerned with legislation, all of them or one class. About holds About, this page, Contact us, Service notices, Feedback and Privacy. A menu's name takes you to its first entry; the arrow beside it opens the menu. On a phone the four fold into one Menu.

Service notices. When the site has something to tell everyone — a pause for maintenance, a correction across many gazettes, something new — a band under the header says so; its × closes it in your browser. Service notices lists every notice, past and present.

Legislation. The Legislation page lists every gazette carrying a bill, the commencement of an Act, regulations or their amendments, rules or codes, a repeal, or a call for comment on any of them — newest first, with the same filters as the list and a Class filter of its own. Under each gazette's name is the notice that put it there, with its class's word before it. The classing is Gazette Finder's, read by rule from the gazette's contents page, not the gazette's own words; a gazette's page labels each notice so classed. The page has its own feed.

Authorities. The authorities page lists every authority that has issued a gazette held here, grouped by kind, with a box to find one by name. An authority's own page lists its gazettes, shows how many it issued each year, and the spellings the Government Printing Works has used for its name.

Reading a gazette

Every gazette has a page of its own. Its name — "Government Gazette 55525 of 9 October 2026" — is composed by Gazette Finder by one rule, and the page says so. The page gives its date, number and kind, the authority that issued it, and the notices it holds as its contents page lists them.

Open the PDF opens our copy. View at the Government Printing Works opens the gazette in the Printing Works' own library — every gazette here links to its original — and Download from GPW fetches the Printing Works' own file.

Share passes a gazette on. Its panel offers X, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Copy link and Email, and on a phone Share with an app on this device… first. What is shared is the gazette's page here, which links the original; wherever the link is pasted it shows a card with the gazette's name and its first notice. Instagram has no share link, so its entry offers the gazette's Story card — Share the Story card on a phone, or Download the Story card — and a caption to paste.

The text. A gazette's full text is read page by page from its PDF — by optical character recognition where a page is a scan — and searched. Its text page lists the pages as they were read; the text itself is not shown here yet, though search reads all of it. Machine-read text can be wrong: the PDF is the record.

The year. The year beside a gazette's number opens every gazette of that year.

Something wrong with a gazette? The line "Something wrong with this gazette?" on its page sends us a report that names it.

New gazettes without an account

The Atom feed of the newest gazettes works in any feed reader, with no account. The Government Printing Works' site is read twice a day, and each new gazette joins the list, the feed and the search as it is found.

Telling us something

Feedback — a gazette's details wrong, a gazette missing, a page that does not work, a suggestion or a comment: the Feedback link at the top of every page opens the form, and you can ask for a reply. From a gazette's page, its line "Something wrong with this gazette?" tells us which one you mean.

Anything else — a question, the press, a privacy or removal request, working together: contact us, and we reply by email.

Questions

What is the Government Gazette? The South African government's official publication. Laws, regulations, proclamations and notices from national departments, Parliament, regulators and other public bodies are published in it, and many take effect or are made known by being published there. The Government Printing Works publishes it, several issues most weeks.

Is Gazette Finder a government site? No. It is an independent, free public-interest service, not affiliated with the Government Printing Works or any department.

Where do the gazettes come from? From the Government Printing Works, the state printer, which publishes them free online. Every gazette here links to its original there.

How soon does a new gazette appear here? The Printing Works' site is read twice a day, so a gazette usually appears here the day the Printing Works lists it.

Which gazettes are here, and which are not yet? The national Government Gazette from 20 May 2016: 7 701 gazettes so far. About lists what is not here yet.

What is ours, and what is the gazette's own? A gazette's name, date, kind, issuing authority, contents line and notices are read and composed by Gazette Finder by rule, and labelled as ours; its text is machine-read from the PDF. None of it is the gazette's own typesetting: the PDF is the record.

Why are some numbers in the text hidden? Gazettes sometimes print South African identity numbers. Gazette Finder hides part of each one in the text it keeps and shows, as •; the PDF itself is unchanged.

Is it free? Yes. Reading, searching cost nothing.

May I reuse the data? The names, dates and other data Gazette Finder composes are licensed CC BY 4.0: reuse them freely, crediting Gazette Finder. The gazettes are official texts, reproduced as published.