Time until :
0
Days0
Hours0
Minutes0
SecondsTable of Contents
When is Chinese New Year?
Chinese New Year — also called Spring Festival or Lunar New Year — falls on the first day of the first month of the Chinese lunisolar calendar. In Gregorian terms, that's the second new moon after the winter solstice, putting the date between January 21 and February 20.
How the date is determined
The Chinese calendar is lunisolar — months track the moon, but the year as a whole stays aligned with the solar seasons through periodic leap months. The new year date is fixed by the following astronomical rule:
- Find the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere (around December 21 or 22 each year).
- Find the second new moon after the solstice. (In most years there is no leap month between the solstice and the new year, so the second new moon is the first day of month 1.)
- That day, at midnight in Beijing time (UTC+8), is the first day of the Chinese lunar year.
The Chinese government's official calculations are produced by the Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing. Because of the lunar-month rounding and the periodic leap months (a 13th month inserted 7 times in every 19-year cycle), the new year can land anywhere from January 21 to February 20 on the Gregorian calendar.
Upcoming Chinese New Year dates
Chinese New Year 2026 was February 17 (already past — Year of the Horse). The next several occurrences:
| Year | Gregorian Date | Day | Zodiac Animal |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2027 | February 6 | Saturday | Goat (Sheep) |
| 2028 | January 26 | Wednesday | Monkey |
| 2029 | February 13 | Tuesday | Rooster |
| 2030 | February 3 | Sunday | Dog |
| 2031 | January 23 | Thursday | Pig |
The Chinese zodiac — 12 animals, 60-year cycle
Each lunar year is associated with one of 12 zodiac animals in a fixed order: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Pig. The cycle is paired with a 10-year cycle of Heavenly Stems (themselves linked to the Five Elements — Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water), producing a combined 60-year cycle in which each animal-element combination occurs once.
The current animals:
- 2026: Year of the Horse (Wů Yěar) — specifically the Fire Horse year.
- 2027: Year of the Goat (sometimes translated “Sheep”).
- 2028: Year of the Monkey.
- 2029: Year of the Rooster.
- 2030: Year of the Dog.
- 2031: Year of the Pig.
A festival with documented 3,500-year history
Chinese New Year traditions are documented from the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BC), making it one of the oldest continuously celebrated holidays in the world. Key historical anchors:
- Shang dynasty: oracle bone inscriptions record sacrificial ceremonies marking the new year.
- Han dynasty (104 BC): Emperor Wu's Táichū calendar fixed the first day of the first lunar month as the official new year date — the rule still used today.
- Wei and Jin dynasties (3rd–5th centuries): the customs of staying up on New Year's Eve (shousui) and family reunion meals begin to be documented.
- Tang dynasty (618–907): firecrackers introduced (originally bamboo segments that exploded in fire). Red couplets and red paper cuttings became standard.
- Song and Ming dynasties: red envelopes (hóngbāo, “ang pao” in Hokkien) become widespread as gifts for children.
- 1949 onward: the People's Republic officially renamed it Chūnjié (“Spring Festival”) to distinguish from the Gregorian January 1 New Year.
- 2024: UNESCO inscribed Spring Festival on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Core traditions
Specific practices vary by region, but the core customs are shared across most Chinese communities worldwide:
- Reunion Dinner (niányèfàn): the most important meal of the year, held on New Year's Eve. Multi-generational family gathering, often involving multi-day travel home.
- Red envelopes (hóngbāo): red packets containing money given by elders to children and unmarried adults. The color red wards off bad luck; the amount often contains the digit 8 (homophone for “wealth”) and avoids 4 (homophone for “death”).
- Couplets (chunlian): red paper strips with paired auspicious phrases pasted on either side of doorways.
- Firecrackers & fireworks: traditionally to scare away the mythical beast Nián. Now banned or restricted in many Chinese cities due to pollution and fire risk.
- Lion and dragon dances: performed by martial arts troupes in red and gold, typically accompanied by drums and cymbals.
- Foods with symbolic names: fish (yú, homophone for “surplus”); dumplings (resembling old gold ingots); long noodles (longevity); sticky rice cake niángāo (homophone for “higher year”); spring rolls (named for the season).
- Lantern Festival (Day 15): closes the celebration with lantern displays, riddles, and tangyuan (sweet glutinous rice balls).
Chunyun — the 40-day travel period around Spring Festival when migrant workers return to their hometowns — is the largest annual human migration in the world, regularly exceeding 3 billion individual passenger trips.
Other East Asian Lunar New Years
The Chinese lunar calendar was adopted by neighboring cultures, producing parallel celebrations on the same date:
- Vietnam: Tết Nguyên Đán (commonly “Tết”). Same date as Chinese New Year, with distinct Vietnamese customs — banh chung (square sticky rice cakes), kumquat trees, peach blossoms.
- South & North Korea: Seollal (설날). Same date. Customs include ancestor worship (charye), traditional Korean dress (hanbok), and the rice cake soup tteokguk.
- Mongolia: Tsagaan Sar (“White Moon”). Uses a related Tibetan-Mongolian calendar, so usually falls on the same day but occasionally diverges.
- Tibet: Losar — uses the Tibetan calendar; typically falls in February but can diverge from Chinese New Year by a month.
Sources & references
- China.org.cn — State Council Information Office portal on Chinese culture and the Spring Festival.
- UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage — Spring Festival was inscribed on the Representative List in 2024.
- Travel China Guide — consolidated calendar reference of Chinese New Year dates.
FAQs
Chinese New Year falls on the first day of the first lunar month in the Chinese lunisolar calendar. In practical terms, this is the second new moon after the winter solstice (sometimes the third if a leap month intervenes). Because the new moon doesn't sync with the Gregorian calendar, the date varies between January 21 and February 20. The official calculation is performed by the Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing, China, using astronomical observation.
Three names, broadly the same festival. Spring Festival (Chūnjié, 春节) is the official Chinese name. Chinese New Year is the standard English term. Lunar New Year is the inclusive term used to also cover the same-date observances in Vietnam (Tết), Korea (Seollal), and Mongolia (Tsagaan Sar, which uses a slightly different calculation). The four East Asian Lunar New Years usually fall on the same day but occasionally diverge by a day or a month.
The Chinese lunisolar calendar mixes 12-month lunar years (354 days) with periodic leap months (a 13th month added 7 times in every 19 years) to keep aligned with the solar year. The result: the lunar new year falls between January 21 and February 20 on the Gregorian calendar, depending on where the moon and the winter solstice fall in any given year. There is no shorter way to predict the date without doing the astronomical computation.
The Chinese zodiac assigns each lunar year an animal sign from a 12-year cycle: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Pig. There is also a 10-year cycle of Heavenly Stems paired with the 12 animals, producing a 60-year combined cycle. 2026 is the Year of the Horse (Wů Yěar); 2027 is the Year of the Goat; 2028 is the Year of the Monkey.
The full traditional celebration runs 15 days, beginning on the first day of the lunar month and ending with the Lantern Festival on the 15th (the first full moon of the lunar new year). In modern China, the official public holiday is 7 days (typically called the Spring Festival Golden Week), though many businesses extend the break and the Chunyun travel period — the world's largest annual human migration — spans roughly 40 days before and after the new year.
Chinese New Year is a public holiday in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Brunei, and Vietnam (as Tết). South Korea observes Seollal as a major public holiday on the same date. It is also a recognized cultural holiday with significant observance in countries with large Chinese diaspora communities (Australia, Canada, US, UK). It was added to UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2024.