Chinese festivals: the full year, and why the dates move

The calendar runs on the moon, and that explains nearly everything

Chinese festivals are dated by the 农历 nónglì, the lunar calendar. That sounds like a technicality until you try to book a flight around one.

A lunar month runs from one new moon to the next, about 29 and a half days. Twelve of those come to roughly 354 days, around 11 days short of a solar year. Let that gap grow and the calendar would slide backwards through the seasons, so the system inserts a leap month (闰月 rùnyuè) every two or three years. A leap year has thirteen months instead of twelve.

That single rule is why festival dates wander inside a window instead of sitting still. Spring Festival can fall anywhere between 21 January and 20 February. It was 17 February in 2026, it is 6 February in 2027, and it jumps back to 26 January in 2028. If you are planning travel, look up the year you are travelling in.

2027, festival by festival

The table below gives every festival worth knowing, sorted by its 2027 date. The ones in red are national holidays.

2027	Festival	Chinese	Pinyin	Lunar (mo/day)	Typical food
15 Jan	Laba Festival	腊八节	Làbājié	12/8	Laba porridge
5 Feb	New Year's EveHoliday	除夕	Chúxī	last day	Reunion dinner
6 Feb	Spring Festival	春节	Chūnjié	1/1	Dumplings
20 Feb	Lantern Festival	元宵节	Yuánxiāojié	1/15	Tangyuan
5 Apr	Qingming	清明节	Qīngmíngjié	Solar term	Qingtuan
9 Jun	Dragon Boat Festival	端午节	Duānwǔjié	5/5	Zongzi
8 Aug	Qixi	七夕节	Qīxījié	7/7	No food attached
16 Aug	Ghost Festival	中元节	Zhōngyuánjié	7/15	Offerings, not meals
15 Sep	Mid-Autumn Festival	中秋节	Zhōngqiūjié	8/15	Mooncakes
8 Oct	Double Ninth	重阳节	Chóngyángjié	9/9	Double Ninth cake
21 Dec	Winter Solstice	冬至	Dōngzhì	Solar term	Dumplings, or tangyuan

The lunar dates above run month first, the way an English date does. Chinese writes them the other way round, so 八月十五 is not August the fifteenth. It is the fifteenth day of the eighth month, which in 2027 is 15 September. Read that the English way and you land a month out.

The four days the country stops

China has four festival holidays plus National Day.

The exact days get reshuffled every year by the State Council, which publishes the calendar in the autumn. Treat specific dates as indicative until that notice lands.

Spring Festival 春节 Chūnjié

The big one. Officially a week, emotionally about two. Trains sell out weeks in advance for what is often called the largest annual human migration on earth, because the holiday is built around going home. On New Year's Eve families gather for a reunion dinner, and the following days are spent visiting relatives. Red envelopes change hands, and the whole country eats dumplings 饺子 jiǎozi at midnight on the first day. There is a separate guide to how Spring Festival works, day by day.

Qingming 清明节 Qīngmíngjié

The one festival that keeps a near-fixed date, because it is a solar term. Families sweep graves and leave offerings for ancestors, which is why you will see it translated as Tomb-Sweeping Day. It is also the start of spring in most of the country, and people take the long weekend to go out into the countryside.

Dragon Boat Festival 端午节 Duānwǔjié

Boats carved as dragons race on rivers, and everyone eats 粽子 zòngzi: glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo leaves and steamed. The festival commemorates Qu Yuan, a poet and minister who drowned himself in protest at a corrupt court. The story goes that people rowed out to save him and threw rice into the water so the fish would leave his body alone.

Mid-Autumn Festival 中秋节 Zhōngqiūjié

The harvest festival, and the second most important family gathering of the year. The moon is at its roundest, which in Chinese thinking means reunion, so the meal is a reunion dinner by definition. Mooncakes 月饼 yuèbǐng are given as gifts, in boxes heavy enough to be a statement. More on this in the Mid-Autumn guide.

Festivals most learners never hear about

The four holidays get all the attention. The rest of the year is where the language lives, because these are the dates Chinese friends will mention casually.

• Laba Festival 腊八节, on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month. It marks the start of the New Year countdown. The dish is Laba porridge, made from eight kinds of grain and bean, sweetened or salted depending on the province.
• Lantern Festival 元宵节 closes the Spring Festival on the fifteenth day, when the first full moon of the new year appears. Lanterns go up, riddles get written on them, and the food is 汤圆 tāngyuán, sweet rice balls. It is a genuine festival in its own right, not a footnote to Spring Festival.
• Qixi 七夕节 is the Chinese Valentine's Day, on the seventh day of the seventh month. It comes from the story of two lovers, a weaver girl and a cowherd, kept apart by the Milky Way and allowed one meeting a year.
• Ghost Festival 中元节 falls on the fifteenth day of the seventh month. Families make offerings for the dead. It is not a party and there is no special food, which is exactly why it never makes the tourist lists.
• Double Ninth 重阳节, ninth day of the ninth month. Two nines stacked, which is considered auspicious and dangerous at once. People climb hills and drink chrysanthemum tea. In modern China it doubles as Senior Citizens' Day.
• Winter Solstice 冬至 is the shortest day of the year and, in many families, a bigger deal than the calendar suggests. The north eats dumplings, the south eats tangyuan, and the argument about which is correct has been running for centuries.

Twelve words that cover the year

Every festival is also a set of words.

These twelve cover the calendar, and the pronunciation is worth getting right. You will use them in conversation long before you write them.

Where outsiders tend to get it wrong

A zodiac year starts at Spring Festival

Someone born on 20 January 2027 is not a Goat. They are still a Horse, because the Goat year does not begin until 6 February. This trips up more people than you would expect who were born in January or early February, and it is the single most common correction in any conversation about Chinese zodiac signs. The full system is in the zodiac guide.

Lunar New Year and Chinese New Year are the same day

Both name the same festival. Lunar New Year is the wider term and covers celebrations across Vietnam, Korea and other countries that also use a lunar calendar. Chinese New Year means this one. Inside China, people mostly just say 春节 Chūnjié, which translates as Spring Festival and carries no ambiguity at all.

The food is the festival

Dumplings at Spring Festival, tangyuan at Lantern Festival, zongzi at Dragon Boat, mooncakes at Mid-Autumn. Each one is tied to a specific idea: dumplings are shaped like old gold ingots, tangyuan sound like the word for reunion, zongzi are the rice thrown to the fish in the Qu Yuan story. Learn the food and you have learned the festival.

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