Chinese New Year dates

Chinese New Year does not fall on a fixed Gregorian date. It is the first day of the first lunar month, between 21 January and 20 February. The table on this page is calculated, not copied: it will still be right the year after next.

The year in the traditional calendar is numbered from a conventional epoch 2 698 years before the Gregorian year of that New Year. The animal and the element change with that year, not with 1 January. Someone born in January may still belong to the previous animal, until the New Year has been reached — the usual mistake of converters that only read the Gregorian year.

The twelve animals, in the order of the legendary race: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Pig. The French page says Lièvre as well as Lapin, Buffle as well as Bœuf: the Chinese characters do not always cut where European languages cut. The goat year is the clearest case — goat, sheep or ram are one sign, and that page sets out the names, the legends, and how a Ding Wei year is read.

The pair of animal and element is one of sixty. A Fire Goat (Ding Wei) last fell in 1967 and before that in 1907; the next after a 2027 Fire Goat is 2087. People celebrating their own animal year — ben ming nian — traditionally wear red; the Fire Goat page sets that custom out.

The festival lasts fifteen days. Public holiday in mainland China is a week, the Golden Week, moved by making up workdays. Schoolchildren have about a month. The journeys home are Chunyun: for 2026, over forty days, some 9.5 billion trips were expected. It is also the moment when unmarried children are expected to present a partner; families still count on marriage and descendants, and it is possible to hire a boyfriend for the visit.

One magazine list dates the first Spring Festival celebration to 2600 BCE, and the lunisolar calendar’s conventional start to 2698 BCE. In 1913 the first day of the first lunar month was officially established as the Spring Festival. The origins page gives the older names of that day, dynasty by dynasty. The festival calendar converts any date.