Chinese moon festival

How it works

English speakers also type Chinese moon cake festival for the same evening. The Chinese name is Zhongqiu Jie. The rule is lunisolar: the fifteenth day of the eighth month, when the moon of that month is the traditional full moon of the harvest. The Gregorian square moves. In 2025 it was 6 October. In 2026 it is 25 September. In 2027 it is 15 September. Do not copy last year’s date onto this year’s wall. From Thursday, 3 September 2026, the next festival night is twenty-two days away.

It is a reunion and moon-watching night, not a U.S. federal holiday. Banks in the United States keep ordinary hours. In mainland China the festival date is a public holiday. Hong Kong and Macau give the public holiday on the following day, so people can stay out for the moon and still rest the next morning. A published leave block around the date is a labour arrangement. It does not create a second moon.

Mooncakes and the other names for the same night

A mooncake is a dense, usually round pastry meant to be sliced and shared. The round face stands for the full moon and for a family sitting in a circle. Tea cuts the sweetness. Cantonese baked cakes with lotus-seed paste, sometimes a salted egg yolk in the centre, are the style most English pictures show. Flaky Suzhou cakes and chilled snow-skin cakes are the same festival food in another crust. One tin is a gift as much as a dessert. One person eating a whole cake like a cupcake has missed the point of the table.

The night is older than any one bakery style. Lanterns, a family meal, and looking up are the ordinary marks. Children carry lanterns. Some cities hang displays. Pomelo and other autumn fruit sit on some tables. None of those extras moves the lunar date. If rain hides the sky, it is still the fifteenth night. You mark the calendar, then you eat.

Names: Mid-Autumn Festival, Moon Festival, Mooncake Festival, Zhongqiu Jie. Rule: fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month. 2026 civil night: Friday, 25 September. 2027 civil night: 15 September. U.S. federal offices: open. Mainland China: public holiday on the festival date.

Watch the moon of the fifteenth night. A photograph of last October’s moon will not do the reunion for you.

Folklore on the night, and the workday elsewhere

English tellings often add Chang’e, who in the folk story rises to the moon, and a rabbit on that moon pounding medicine. Those are tales told at the table. They are not astronomy, and they are not a wildlife report. The festival does not wait for a NASA full-moon table either. The astronomical full moon can sit on a neighbouring civil day. Households still keep the fifteenth of the eighth month. If you came for the science of the harvest moon, that is a sky page. If you came for the feast, this is the feast.

If you work in the United States and want the night off, you ask an employer. The federal list will not do it. If you work where Mid-Autumn is gazetted, read that year’s notice for the exact rest days, because weekends are sometimes grouped around the night. Overseas Chinese communities keep the same lunar rule and their own street fairs. A ticketed lantern walk in another month is a show. It is not Zhongqiu unless it falls on that fifteenth night.