よくある質問
When is Chinese New Year 2027?
Saturday, February 6, 2027 — the first day of the lunar calendar's Year of the Goat. New Year's Eve is Friday, February 5, and the Lantern Festival (the traditional close of the season) falls on Saturday, February 20. The date is fixed astronomically and cannot change.
How long is the official 2027 Spring Festival holiday in China?
Nine days: February 5–13, 2027 (New Year's Eve through the 8th day of the lunar new year), per the State Council's official notice published November 5, 2026. Two Sundays become working days to compensate: January 31 and February 14, 2027. Most offices, banks, and schools are off the entire window.
Is it a bad time to visit China during Chinese New Year?
Depends on your style. It's the best time for temple fairs, lanterns, and cultural immersion — and the worst time for spontaneity: trains, flights, and hotels sell out or spike weeks ahead, family-run restaurants may close for a few days, and attractions are at domestic-peak crowds. Plan and book everything in advance, and you'll be fine.
When do Chinese New Year 2027 train tickets go on sale?
Tickets open on 12306 15 days before departure. For the 2027 holiday: Feb 5 (Eve) tickets open Jan 22, Feb 6 (New Year's Day) tickets open Jan 23, and return-peak Feb 12–13 tickets open Jan 29–30. Peak trains sell out in minutes — use 12306's waitlist (候补) feature and set a sale-time reminder in the app.
What is closed during Chinese New Year in China?
Banks, government offices, and many small family-run shops and restaurants close (typically a few days around New Year's Day). Major attractions, museums, and shopping malls largely stay open — it's peak domestic tourism. Express delivery runs at reduced capacity with possible surcharges; some franchise networks pause for part of the holiday.
Is the Lantern Festival a public holiday in 2027?
No. The Lantern Festival (February 20, 2027) is not part of the official holiday window, which ends February 13. It lands on a Saturday that year, so it's an ordinary weekend — but it's still the single best evening of the season for lantern displays, if your trip extends that far.
Quick Summary: Chinese New Year 2027 falls on Saturday, February 6 — the Year of the Goat. The State Council’s official notice (published November 5, 2026) sets the public holiday at February 5–13, nine days, with Sunday January 31 and Sunday February 14 as make-up workdays. Expect the year’s biggest travel rush: train tickets open 15 days ahead on 12306 (Eve tickets January 22), flights and hotels spike, banks and small family businesses close, attractions stay open but packed, and couriers run slow with surcharges. The current 30-day visa-free entry policy expires December 31, 2026 — if you plan a 2027 trip, watch for the extension announcement.
Chinese New Year is the one event that reshapes the entire country for two weeks: the largest annual human migration on earth, a near-national day off, and a stretch where half the country is on a train heading home. If your trip touches late January or February 2027, this page tells you the exact dates (now officially confirmed), what the holiday does to trains, flights, hotels, banks, attractions, and deliveries, and how to plan around it rather than through it. (For the general playbook, see the How to Pay in China guide — set up before you fly — and the eSIM for China comparison; both are unaffected by the holiday but matter more when lines are long.)
The Dates: Chinese New Year 2027, Confirmed
The lunar date is fixed by the calendar and now matched by the official holiday schedule:
| Date | What it is | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Fri, Jan 22 | Train tickets for Feb 5 (Eve) go on sale | 15-day pre-sale window |
| Sat, Jan 31 | Make-up workday (Sunday) | Compensation for the long break |
| Fri, Feb 5 | New Year’s Eve (除夕) — holiday starts | Reunion dinner night; fireworks after midnight |
| Sat, Feb 6 | Chinese New Year’s Day (初一) | Year of the Goat begins; family visits |
| Sun, Feb 7 – Wed, Feb 10 | Days 2–5 of the holiday | Visiting relatives, temple fairs, short trips |
| Sat, Feb 13 | Last official holiday day (初八) | Return-travel peak; holiday ends |
| Sun, Feb 14 | Make-up workday (Sunday) | Also Valentine’s Day — expect both crowds |
| Sat, Feb 20 | Lantern Festival (元宵节) | Not a public holiday; best lantern night |
The holiday arrangement comes from the State Council’s notice 《国务院办公厅关于2027年部分节假日安排的通知》 (国办发明电〔2026〕10号), published on gov.cn on November 5, 2026: February 5 through February 13, nine days, with January 31 and February 14 as adjusted working days. That mirrors the 2026 pattern exactly — in 2026 the Spring Festival window was February 15–23, also nine days — so travelers can plan 2027 with real dates, not guesswork. (Last verified: 2026-11)
Two detail points from that table worth planning around:
- The Goat year starts February 6, 2027 and runs until January 25, 2028. Chinese zodiac years follow the lunar calendar, not January 1 — anyone born between those dates in 2027 is a Goat.
- The Lantern Festival is NOT part of the official break. February 20, 2027 is a normal Saturday. City lantern displays and temple fairs still run that evening and often the whole weekend — it’s the season’s best photo night — but hotels and trains around it follow normal (weekend) pricing, not holiday pricing.
The Spring Festival Travel Rush (春运) and Train Tickets
The holiday itself is nine days, but the travel rush around it lasts forty. China’s Spring Festival travel season (春运) is the largest annual migration on the planet: in 2026, the officially designated rush ran February 2 – March 13 and moved a forecast 539 million rail passengers, with roughly 9.4 billion total cross-regional trips across all transport modes counted by the transport ministry. The 2027 rush window hasn’t been formally announced yet (it typically lands in early January) — expect roughly late January through early March, centered on the same peaks. (Last verified: 2026-11)
When 2027 tickets actually go on sale
Rail tickets open on 12306 fifteen days before departure, including the departure day itself — that’s the standing official pre-sale rule. Applied to the 2027 holiday:
| Departure date | Tickets open | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Fri, Feb 5 (Eve) | Fri, Jan 22 | The hardest ticket in China — going home for the reunion dinner |
| Sat, Feb 6 (Day 1) | Sat, Jan 23 | Holiday-start travel |
| Sat, Feb 12 (Day 7) | Fri, Jan 29 | First return-peak day |
| Sun, Feb 13 (Day 8) | Sat, Jan 30 | Second return-peak day |
Three mechanics matter more than the calendar:
- Peak trains sell out in minutes. Popular intercity routes into and out of major hubs on Feb 5 and Feb 12–13 routinely exhaust their quota within minutes of opening. If you miss the opening, use 12306’s built-in waitlist (候补) feature — cancellations feed it automatically, and it’s how most people actually secure holiday tickets.
- Set a reminder. The 12306 app lets you star a train and notifies you at its exact sale moment. Sale times are staggered by station across the day, so the app’s reminder is more reliable than doing the timezone math yourself.
- Foreigners book with a passport. The 12306 English site and app accept passport-registered accounts, and your passport is the travel document at the gate. The full walkthrough — including the Trip.com alternative and the phone-number pitfalls — is in the China Train Tickets Guide and the Train Tickets Without a Chinese Phone Number guide. The official ticket rules live at 12306.cn. (Last verified: 2026-11)
If you’ll be in China during the rush without pre-booked trains, treat same-day station tickets as unavailable and build your itinerary around flights, buses, or the cities you’re already in. Stations themselves are an experience during the peak — arrive 60–90 minutes early for any holiday-window train.
Flights, Hotels, and Prices
- Domestic flights: fares for travel inside the Feb 5–13 window climb sharply and the cheapest inventory disappears 3–4 weeks out. Book by early January for holiday-window travel. Flight capacity stays high — airlines add holiday rotations — so the issue is price, not availability, on major routes.
- International flights: routes into China around the holiday are busy in both directions (family visits both ways), and the days just before Feb 5 and just after Feb 13 price highest.
- Hotels: prices rise in tourist cities (Harbin’s ice festival season overlaps, as do Beijing, Xi’an, and Shanghai) and in smaller cities that host returning families. Foreigner-friendly inventory is thinner in small cities — if you’re off the beaten path during the window, book ahead using the How to Book Hotels in China guide. (Last verified: 2026-11)
- Expressways: tolls for passenger cars were waived for all nine days of the 2026 holiday, and the same pattern is expected for 2027 (the formal announcement comes with the transport ministry’s holiday plan). If you’re being driven between cities during the window, roads are heavy on Feb 5 and Feb 12–13.
What’s Open and What’s Closed
The holiday splits the country into two economies: the tourist economy (open, crowded) and the administrative/family economy (closed, then slowly reopening).
| Category | During Feb 5–13 | Practical note |
|---|---|---|
| Banks | Branches closed on statutory days | ATMs and mobile payments work normally — get any big cash needs done before Feb 5 |
| Government offices / visa & residence services | Closed | Immigration counters at ports stay staffed; city service halls reopen Feb 16 |
| Major attractions & museums | Open, heavily crowded | Reservation-required venues (Forbidden City class) sell out daily — book the moment your dates are fixed; statutory holidays suspend the usual Monday closures |
| Shopping malls & chains | Open | Malls are a de facto national pastime during the holiday |
| Small family shops & restaurants | Often closed days 1–3 | Big cities feel this less; tier-2/3 cities and oldtown districts can go quiet for two or three days, then reopen |
| Courier & food delivery | Running, degraded | Slower, surcharges, partial-network pauses — details below |
The attraction-crowding point deserves emphasis: Chinese New Year is domestic peak season. The Great Wall, Forbidden City, Zhangjiajie, and Harbin all operate — with the year’s largest crowds. Reserved-entry venues release quotas in advance; during the 2026 holiday many sold out within hours of release. If a specific venue is on your list, set its reservation reminder the same day you book your flights. (Last verified: 2026-11)
Money, Payments, and Delivery During the Holiday
- Payments: nothing changes. Alipay, WeChat Pay, and cash all work exactly as normal — the holiday doesn’t touch payment rails. If anything, scan-to-pay gets more useful, since it works where card terminals and bank branches don’t exist.
- Cash & exchange: bank branches shut for the statutory days, so handle currency exchange or large withdrawals before February 5. ATMs run the whole time. The setup steps, if you haven’t done them yet, are in the How to Pay in China guide.
- Express delivery: the industry has settled into a “stay open, run slower, charge a bit more” pattern. In 2026, SF Express published its usual holiday notice — a small resource-adjustment fee phased around the holiday (the peak surcharge ran about ¥0.1–1.5 per kg on heavier shipments, rising modestly during the Feb 16–23 stretch) — while some franchise networks paused entirely (ZTO Express’s freight arm, for example, stopped Feb 13–23 and resumed Feb 24). The State Post Bureau issues an annual holiday service plan; 2027’s specifics aren’t out yet, so treat “delivered during the holiday” as “eventually, with a surcharge” and plan any shipped-luggage or shopping moves around it. (Last verified: 2026-11)
- Food delivery: Meituan and Ele.me stay online in cities, with fewer riders, longer times, and higher fees — the platform’s own holiday surge dynamics. Stock hotel snacks for late nights in smaller cities, where options genuinely thin out on New Year’s Day itself.
Visas and Entry Around Chinese New Year 2027
The holiday changes queues, not rules:
- The 30-day unilateral visa-free policy (covering 50+ nationalities incl. France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Malaysia, and more) is currently extended through December 31, 2026. Extensions have been rolled forward repeatedly, but the 2027 extension hadn’t been announced as of this page’s last update — if your trip starts in 2027, check the current end date on the China Visa-Free Countries guide before relying on it.
- The 240-hour visa-free transit policy (57 nationalities, 65 ports, 24 provinces) has no stated end date and works year-round — the holiday doesn’t affect eligibility. What does change: immigration and customs queues at major ports run long on Feb 5–6 and Feb 12–14 as holiday traffic peaks. File your arrival card online in advance to skip one counter.
- Visa applications: embassies and consulates close for Chinese statutory holidays (often additionally for their own national holidays) — if you need a visa for a February trip, apply in early January, not late January. The type-selection basics are in the China Visa Types guide, and the 240-hour transit mechanics (including the A→B→C ticket rule) are in the 144/240-Hour Transit Hub. (Last verified: 2026-11)
So Should You Visit China During Chinese New Year 2027?
Three honest verdicts:
- For culture-first travelers: arguably the best week of the year. Temple fairs, lanterns, red envelopes, family fireworks in cities that allow them, and a country celebrating at full volume. Nothing else on the calendar looks like Feb 5–13.
- For first-timers on tight schedules: think hard. Everything takes longer — trains, entry queues, reservations — and the chaos is additive with winter weather in the north. If your must-see list is dense and fixed, late March–April or October gives you more China per day.
- For flexible travelers already in Asia: a great deal. If you can book early (flights by December, trains on their January sale dates, hotels ahead of the spike), you get the festival plus a country that’s genuinely fun to watch celebrate. Just keep Feb 5 and Feb 12–13 out of your intercity moves unless those tickets are already yours.
One practical ritual, if you’re around anyone’s family table: 新年快乐 (xīn nián kuài lè) — “Happy New Year” — works everywhere, and 恭喜发财 (gōng xǐ fā cái) — “wishing you prosperity” — earns a smile from every elder in earshot.
Related Guides
- China Train Tickets Guide — buying high-speed rail on 12306 as a foreigner, the 15-day sale window, and the waitlist feature
- China Visa-Free Countries — the 30-day unilateral list and its current expiry, the key watch item for 2027 arrivals
- 144/240-Hour Visa-Free Transit Hub — transit eligibility, the A→B→C ticket rule, and the 30-second checker
- How to Pay in China — set up Alipay/WeChat Pay before the holiday banks close
- eSIM for China — connectivity that works from touchdown, holiday or not