Chinese new year lanterns

what is chinese new year

Chinese New Year is Spring Festival: the first day of the traditional lunisolar year, set by a new moon between late January and mid-February. It is not 1 January. In 2026 that first morning was Tuesday, 17 February, the start of a Horse year. Work contracts and tickets in China still use the Gregorian number. The festival names the reunion on the eve, the animal year, and the stretch of nights that follows.

Lanterns belong to that stretch, not to a separate civil new year. Households and streets hang red lanterns from the eve onward. The named lantern night is later: the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, Yuanxiao, when the first full moon of the year is marked. In 2026 that night was 3 March. On 3 September 2026 both mornings are long over. The Horse label is still in force until the next lunar new year on 6 February 2027. The lanterns of the festival week are not.

People type “Chinese new year lanterns” when they want the lights, not a second January. A restaurant lantern in September is décor. A festival lantern is a date: eve through the fifteenth night, with the big public displays aimed at Yuanxiao.

When the lanterns actually go up

Red lanterns on a door or a shop front can appear before the eve and stay after the fifteenth. That is custom and commerce, not a second statute. The Lantern Festival itself is the fifteenth. It is part of Spring Festival in folk counting and is not, in mainland public-holiday timetables, a separate nationwide day off of its own. People who still have leave take it. People who do not go to work and hang lights in the evening.

Customs on that night are stable even when the Gregorian date moves. Families eat glutinous rice balls — yuanxiao in the north, tangyuan in the south — round food for a round moon and a reunion. Streets show lanterns, often with riddles on them. Lion and dragon dances, and leftover fireworks, turn up where local rules allow. None of that needs a 1 January countdown.

Spring Festival 2026: 17 February, Horse year. Lantern Festival 2026: 3 March, fifteenth lunar night. Next lunar new year: 6 February 2027, Goat (Sheep) year. Festival food that night: yuanxiao or tangyuan.

Status of Yuanxiao: traditional close of the new-year season, not a second 1 January. A lantern is a light you hang. It is not a second new year. The year already started on the new moon, two weeks before the full one.

What the lanterns are for

Red is the festival colour. A round lantern is a full-moon shape you can hang on a wire. Paper, silk, and now plastic all count as lanterns if they light. Palace lanterns, animal lanterns, and horse lanterns in a Horse year are display, not a zoology lesson. Riddles on the lanterns are a game: guess, take a small prize if the host offered one. A riddle you cannot solve does not cancel the night.

Do not treat a Chinatown lantern in September as proof that Spring Festival has returned. Do not treat Mid-Autumn lanterns, which belong to a different full moon in autumn, as Yuanxiao by another name. Both use light and a moon. Only the fifteenth of the first lunar month closes Chinese New Year. Mid-Autumn has its own date and its own cakes.

If you are hanging lanterns for the festival, hang them for the eve-to-fifteenth window, and take the public display as far as the fifteenth night. If you are dating a photograph, 17 February 2026 is the new year; 3 March 2026 is the lantern night. A September snap of a red lantern is a shop front, not a calendar.