Live countdown to every major Chinese lunar festival — Spring Festival, Lantern, Dragon Boat, Qixi, Ghost, Mid-Autumn, Double Ninth, Laba, New Year's Eve. Computed locally.
Chinese Festival Countdown
How to use
It counts down the moment you open it
No input needed. The tool reads your device's current date, computes how many days until each major Chinese festival, and sorts soonest-first.
Scan the festival list
You'll see nine festivals — Spring Festival, Lantern, Dragon Boat, Qixi, Ghost, Mid-Autumn, Double Ninth, Laba and New Year's Eve — each with its lunar date, matching Gregorian date, and a day countdown.
Understand the "next occurrence" logic
If a festival has already passed this year, the tool rolls forward to next year's date. So you always see the NEXT occurrence and the countdown is always positive.
When a festival is today
If a festival lands on today, that row shows a red "Today!" badge instead of a number. Everything is computed in your browser — no network needed.
Chinese Festivals: A Calendar That Moves With the Moon
Nearly every traditional Chinese festival is fixed to the lunar (lunisolar) calendar, which means its Gregorian date changes every single year. This year Mid-Autumn lands on a day in September; next year it may shift by almost a month. That's exactly why these dates are so hard to remember in advance — you can't pin them to a fixed Gregorian day the way you can with Christmas. This tool does one job well: it reads your device's current date, converts the lunar date of each of nine major festivals (e.g. Mid-Autumn = lunar 8/15) into its Gregorian date for this year (or next year if it has already passed), then computes how many days remain and sorts soonest-first. Every calculation runs locally in your browser using public-domain lunar astronomy formulae — nothing is sent to a server, nothing is stored.
The nine festivals this tool covers
Spring Festival (lunar 1/1) opens the lunar new year and is the most important holiday for ASEAN Chinese communities; Lantern (1/15) closes the new-year season with lantern displays and glutinous-rice balls; Dragon Boat (5/5) brings boat races and zongzi, honouring the poet Qu Yuan; Qixi (7/7) is the "Chinese Valentine's Day" of the Cowherd and Weaver Girl; Ghost Festival (7/15) honours ancestors and is widely observed as 盂兰盆/普度 across Singapore and Malaysia; Mid-Autumn (8/15) gathers families for mooncakes under the full moon; Double Ninth (9/9) climbs hills and honours elders; Laba (12/8) brings laba porridge and signals the approaching year-end; New Year's Eve (the last day of the lunar year) is the reunion-dinner night that sees out the old year.
Why the Gregorian date shifts every year
A solar year is about 365.24 days, while twelve synodic (lunar) months total only ~354 days — a gap of roughly 11 days per year. The lunar calendar compensates with leap months, inserting 7 of them every 19 years, keeping the seasonal terms aligned with the seasons. The side effect is that any given lunar date floats across an ~one-month window of Gregorian dates. Spring Festival, for instance, can fall as early as 21 January or as late as 20 February. Knowing each festival's exact Gregorian date well ahead of time helps enormously with planning leave, flights, family gatherings, and shop promotions. This tool turns something that used to need an almanac into a single glance.
How ASEAN Chinese communities use it
In Singapore and Malaysia, lunar festivals are both cultural heritage and part of public life: Chinese New Year is a two-day public holiday in Singapore (Mid-Autumn is not one), and Ghost-Festival observances animate whole streets of shops. This tool lets you see at a glance how many days remain until the next festival — whether you're planning a reunion dinner, ordering mooncakes, booking a flight home, or running a shop that needs to dress its windows for the season ahead. It also suits the wider Chinese diaspora: each festival's lunar definition is the same everywhere, and the countdown runs from today's date in Singapore (UTC+8), so in another time zone a festival day may begin a few hours before or after your own midnight.
Spring Festival roams a full month; Qingming is the exception
Spring Festival opens the lunar year and can fall on any day from 21 January to 20 February — an almost one-month range — depending on where the second new moon after the winter solstice lands.
Dragon Boat Festival (lunar 5/5) was the first Chinese festival inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, in 2009.
Mid-Autumn and Dragon Boat are tied to lunar day-numbers, so their Gregorian dates roam every year. Qingming is the exception — it follows a solar term, so it stays near 4–6 April. (This tool covers the lunar-fixed festivals.)
Qixi (lunar 7/7), from the legend of the Cowherd and Weaver Girl, is dubbed the "Chinese Valentine's Day" — but traditionally it was the Begging-for-Skills festival, when women prayed to the Weaver Girl for nimble hands and a good marriage.
The 7/15 festival is called 中元 in Taoism, 盂兰盆 (Ullambana) in Buddhism, and the "Ghost Festival" in folk custom — three cultural narratives sharing one lunar date, observed especially vividly across Singapore and Malaysia.
A popular legend ties Mid-Autumn mooncakes to the late-Yuan uprising: rebels supposedly smuggled the message "rise on 8/15" hidden inside the cakes. True or not, the mooncake remains the festival's defining symbol.
Double Ninth (lunar 9/9) is named for its twin nines (the peak yang number). Mainland China designated it Seniors' Day in 1989 — climbing heights, admiring chrysanthemums, and honouring elders are its core customs.
Laba (lunar 12/8) is marked by laba porridge and signals the approaching year-end. "腊" originally referred to year-end ancestral rites; 腊月 is the last lunar month, and once Laba passes, the new-year mood builds.
New Year's Eve is the last day of the lunar year — it can be the 30th OR the 29th. If the final lunar month is "short" (29 days), the eve falls on the 29th, so it isn't always day 30. This tool computes it as "the day before next year's 1/1" to stay correct.
The same lunar festivals echo across the region: Vietnam's Tết is the lunar new year, and Korea's Chuseok corresponds to Mid-Autumn. The lunar calendar's reach extends far beyond China, across all of East and Southeast Asia.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Because these festivals are fixed to the lunar calendar (e.g. Mid-Autumn = lunar 8/15), which is lunisolar. Its alignment with the Gregorian calendar drifts ~11 days a year and, after leap-month correction, floats across a ~one-month window. The tool computes this year's (or next year's) exact Gregorian date for you.
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It uses your device's local current date as "today." The festivals themselves are resolved from their lunar definition (computed at UTC+8), but the days-remaining count is measured from your device's local day, so it stays accurate for overseas users.
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The tool automatically rolls forward to next year's occurrence, so you always see the NEXT instance of that festival. The countdown is always positive — no negative numbers or expired entries.
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New Year's Eve is the last day of the lunar year — the 29th or 30th. The tool uses a robust method: it takes the day before next year's Spring Festival (lunar 1/1), which is always correct whether the final lunar month is long or short.
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No. All computation runs locally in your browser, with no server calls. The tool only reads your device's current date to drive the countdown — it collects, sends, and stores nothing.
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This tool focuses on festivals fixed to a lunar day. Qingming and the Winter Solstice are solar terms, fixed by solar longitude, so their Gregorian dates are nearly constant (Qingming ≈ 5 April). For solar-term dates, use our 24-solar-terms tools.
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Each time you open or refresh the page, the tool re-reads the current date and recomputes every countdown — so visiting the next day shows one fewer day. It needs no background network refresh and performs none.
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Dates come from the site's lunisolar engine, which computes true new moons and solar terms from astronomical formulas and is checked against the Hong Kong Observatory's published tables — all 200 Chinese New Year dates and 73 leap months from 1901 to 2100 agree. Each festival's lunar date is its traditional definition; the countdown starts from today's date in Singapore (UTC+8).
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This tool shows the NEXT occurrence relative to today, with a countdown. To look up a festival's Gregorian date for any specific year (e.g. "what date is Mid-Autumn in 2030?"), use our Lunar ↔ Gregorian converter Lunar / Solar Date Converter.
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It means the lunar-calendar script didn't load — usually a dropped connection or a browser blocking scripts. Refresh the page; if it persists, check whether an ad/script blocker is stopping our own first-party script files from loading.
Method & sources
How it computes
Each festival is a lunar date (除夕 = the day before the next 正月初一). Its Gregorian date comes from LunisolarKernel; the next occurrence is the earliest on or after today among the lunar years before, of and after today's year, so January's 腊八 and 除夕 are not skipped (FestivalCountdownKernel). Today is the Singapore date (UTC+8).
What this tool implements
- The next occurrence is searched across the lunar years before, of and after the current Gregorian year, because a lunar year straddles two Gregorian years: in January the coming 腊八 and 除夕 belong to the lunar year still running. 除夕 is the day before the next 正月初一, since the last lunar month has 29 days in about half of all years.
- "Today" is the Singapore business day (window.RecaBusinessDay), the site-wide rule; the page says that readers elsewhere may see a festival day start a few hours from their own midnight.
- Corrected 2026-10-14: 腊八 and 除夕 skipped by a year every January; the countdown taken from the visitor's device date; the untested RecaLunar wrapper replaced; Mid-Autumn no longer described as a public holiday in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.
Sources
- Hong Kong Observatory. Gregorian–Lunar Calendar Conversion Table (1901–2100), against which the lunisolar engine is tested: https://www.hko.gov.hk/en/gts/time/conversion.htm
- GB/T 33661-2017, 农历的编算和颁行 (Calculation and promulgation of the Chinese calendar) — the 无中气 leap-month rule the engine applies.
- Ministry of Manpower, Singapore. Public holidays for 2025–2027 (Chinese New Year two days; no Mid-Autumn holiday): https://www.mom.gov.sg/employment-practices/public-holidays
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