The Chinese festival year
节
Chinese Festivals
Fifteen festivals, in the order they arrive.
Here is what each one means, how to prepare, and what not to do.
Read the guidesWhy the dates are different every year
Three things are going on at once, and it confuses almost everyone the first time.
Most festivals follow the moon
The lunar month runs 29 or 30 days, so twelve of them fall about eleven days short of a solar year. A leap month is inserted every two or three years to catch up. That is why Spring Festival drifts between 21 January and 21 February and never leaves that window.
Two of them follow the sun
Qingming and the Winter Solstice are solar terms, not lunar holidays. They are fixed by the sun’s position, so they land on the same two or three dates almost every year. A festival that does not move is the exception here, not the rule.
The dates here are computed, not copied
Every date on this site is calculated from the lunar calendar and from the sun’s apparent longitude, for 2026 through 2040, then checked against a second independent calendar and against published tables. Where the sources disagreed, we say so.
The festival year at a glance
Fifteen festivals in the order they fall through the lunar year — from Chinese New Year to New Year’s Eve. The dates move every year, because most of them follow the moon rather than the calendar.
