When Is Chinese New Year 2027?春节是几月几号？ Dates, key days and why it changes

The festival is longer than one day. These are the days people plan around. Dates follow Beijing time.

Each date is the first day of the first lunar month in Beijing time. The animal is the zodiac sign of the year that begins on that day.

China's traditional calendar is lunisolar. Each month starts on the day of a new moon, so a month has 29 or 30 days and twelve months add up to about 354 days, eleven days short of the solar year. To keep the months in step with the seasons, a thirteenth “leap month” is added about every three years.

Chinese New Year is the first day of the first month of that calendar. In most years it is the second new moon after the winter solstice. That is why it always falls between 21 January and 20 February, and why it moves about eleven days earlier each year and then jumps back by about nineteen days after a leap month.

The new moon is timed for Beijing, so the date is the same all over China.

• The festival: 15 days, from New Year's Day to the Lantern Festival. With the preparations from Little New Year, the season lasts about three weeks.
• The public holiday in mainland China: four statutory days including New Year's Eve, joined with weekends into about eight days off. In 2026 the holiday ran for nine days, from 15 to 23 February.
• The 2027 holiday: the official schedule is usually announced around November of the year before, so it has not been published yet.

Trains and flights are busiest in the two weeks before New Year's Eve. This travel season is called 春运 (Chūnyùn).

Usually, yes. Korea's Seollal and Vietnam's Tết use the same kind of calendar and normally fall on the same day as Chinese New Year. Because each country times the new moon in its own time zone, the dates can differ by one day in a few years.

In English, “Chinese New Year” and “Lunar New Year” are both common. In China the holiday is called the Spring Festival, 春节 (Chūnjié).

Dates are said from large to small: month, then day. Traditional dates use 正月 (zhēngyuè) for the first lunar month and 初 (chū) before the first ten days, so New Year's Day is 正月初一.