The lunar calendar still runs in parallel with the Gregorian one across East Asia, even after most national governments adopted the solar calendar in the late 1800s. Lunar New Year, Mid-Autumn Festival, and a handful of older agricultural and ancestor-honoring observances continue to set their dates by the moon. For anyone planning travel, building products for East Asian markets, or scheduling around family in Korea, China, Vietnam, or Okinawa, the practical question every January is the same: what Gregorian dates do these lunar holidays land on this year? For 2026, the answer comes down to four anchor dates that frame the rest.
The 2026 lunar calendar at a glance
| Holiday | Lunar date | Gregorian 2026 | Where observed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lunar New Year (Spring Festival / Seollal / Tết / Sōgatsu) | 1st day, 1st month | Feb 17 (Tue) | China, Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Okinawa |
| First Full Moon (Lantern Festival / Daeboreum) | 15th day, 1st month | Mar 3 (Tue) | China, Korea |
| Qingming / Hansik | Solar term, ~Apr 5 | Apr 5–6 | China, Korea |
| Dragon Boat Festival (Duanwu / Dano) | 5th day, 5th month | Mid-June | China, Korea, Vietnam |
| Old Bon (沖縄旧盆) | 13–15th day, 7th month | Aug 25–27 | Okinawa |
| Mid-Autumn Festival (Chuseok / Tsukimi) | 15th day, 8th month | Sep 25 (Fri) | Most of East Asia |
| Winter Solstice (Dongzhi / Dongji) | Solar term | Dec 22 (Tue) | China, Korea |
The four anchor dates that frame the year are Lunar New Year on February 17, the Lantern Festival on March 3, Mid-Autumn on September 25, and Winter Solstice on December 22. Memorizing those four moves most lunar-calendar planning from “look it up” to “already know.”
Lunar New Year — Tuesday, February 17, 2026
Lunar New Year 2026 marks the start of the Year of the Horse (丙午, bǐng wǔ) under the sexagenary calendar that combines ten Heavenly Stems with twelve Earthly Branches into a 60-year cycle. The same Gregorian date is celebrated under different names: Spring Festival (春节) in mainland China, Seollal (설날) in Korea, Tết Nguyên Đán in Vietnam, Tsagaan Sar in Mongolia, and Sōgatsu in Okinawa. According to Easy Tour China’s 2026 holiday guide, the date is consistent across all regions because they all use the same lunisolar calculation rooted in the Chinese astronomical system.
In mainland China, the Spring Festival public holiday in 2026 will run for roughly seven days starting from the eve, though the exact dates are typically confirmed by the State Council each fall. South Korea’s Seollal holiday runs three days, with February 16 (Mon), 17 (Tue), and 18 (Wed) as the official non-working days. Vietnam’s Tết observance is similar in length but family travel patterns extend the practical holiday period.
For travel planning into the region in 2026, late January through mid-February brings the densest air-travel period of the year, with prices typically peaking 7–10 days before Lunar New Year and remaining elevated through the first week after. Hotels in Beijing, Seoul, and Hanoi often hit annual peak rates over the holiday week.
Mid-Autumn Festival — Friday, September 25, 2026
Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, when the harvest moon traditionally reaches its fullest appearance. In 2026 that’s September 25. Public Holidays China’s Mid-Autumn Festival reference confirms the same date for mainland China’s mooncake festival, while Korea celebrates Chuseok on the identical Friday and Japan observes Tsukimi (moon viewing) on the same lunar date.
The astronomically full moon doesn’t always land exactly on the 15th of the 8th lunar month — depending on the year, the calendar date can be a day before or after the full moon. For 2026, the full moon is close enough to September 25 that the cultural and astronomical events coincide for most observers.
In Korea, Chuseok is the country’s largest annual holiday alongside Seollal, with families traveling to ancestral hometowns for harvest-time rituals (차례) and to share songpyeon rice cakes. The 2026 Chuseok holiday spans Thursday September 24, Friday September 25, and Saturday September 26 — three days, with the Saturday absorbing what would otherwise be a substitute holiday. Some employers add Monday September 28 as an additional non-working day, creating an extended five-day break.
This is where the core property of a lunar holiday becomes concrete. Mid-Autumn is the 15th day of the 8th lunar month — the lunar date is fixed, but the Gregorian date moves every year. The same 15th-of-the-8th-month lands on September 25 in 2026, yet convert that identical lunar date for a different year and you get a different result: a lunar holiday drifts roughly 11 days earlier on the Gregorian calendar each year, and any year with a leap month inserted swings it back about 19 days instead. Knowing “Mid-Autumn is September 25 this year” does not tell you next year’s date — or the year after. To see what Gregorian date the 15th of the 8th lunar month maps to in any given year, enter that lunar date and the year into the PiPi Worlds lunar calendar converter and the answer comes back immediately.
Winter Solstice — Tuesday, December 22, 2026
Winter Solstice (冬至) is technically a solar term rather than a lunar date, but it’s been treated as part of the lunisolar holiday system across East Asia for two millennia. In 2026 it falls on December 22. The day marks the year’s longest night, the symbolic return of yang energy, and is celebrated with red bean porridge in Korea (팥죽) and tangyuan glutinous rice balls in southern China.
A lesser-known function of the Winter Solstice in the traditional calendar is its role as the reference point for the Hansik holiday in Korea, which falls 105 days after the previous solstice. So for 2026, Hansik lands around April 5–6, in the same week as the Qingming festival in China and the solar Children’s Day variant of family-focused spring observances.
Why dates shift each year on the Gregorian calendar
The reason these dates jump around the Gregorian calendar is that the traditional East Asian calendar is lunisolar — its months follow the moon (each about 29.5 days) but the year is corrected to track the seasons via leap months added every 2 to 3 years. Twelve lunar months total roughly 354 days, 11 days short of a solar year, so each lunar holiday lands approximately 11 days earlier on the Gregorian calendar each successive year. When that drift exceeds a month, a leap month is inserted under the 19-year Metonic cycle, which pushes the lunar calendar back roughly 19 days and resets the drift.
The practical result is that Lunar New Year always falls between January 21 and February 20, Mid-Autumn between September 7 and October 8, and Winter Solstice between December 21 and 23. Within those windows, the exact Gregorian date in any given year requires consulting a lunisolar conversion table or calculator, which is why families and businesses operating in East Asia tend to look up the next 5–10 years’ dates at once.
What Japan keeps and what it doesn’t
Japan officially adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1873 and shifted most traditional festivals to fixed solar dates — Tanabata to July 7 (rather than the lunar 7th day of the 7th month), Obon to August 13–15 (a “month-delayed” version of the original lunar 7th-month date), and the New Year to January 1 (rather than lunar new year). The result is that on mainland Japan, the lunar calendar is largely invisible in everyday life.
Three exceptions persist. First, Okinawa retains the lunar calendar for major family observances — Lunar New Year on February 17, the Old Bon (旧盆) over August 25–27, and the spring grave-cleaning rite Shīmī (清明祭) in early April 2026. Second, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan promotes a “traditional Tanabata” (伝統的七夕) on the lunar 7th day of the 7th month, which falls in mid-August in 2026 and offers better star-viewing conditions than the rainy-season July 7 date. Third, the Mid-Autumn moon-viewing tradition remains widely observed culturally on its lunisolar date, which is why September 25, 2026 still appears on Japanese calendars as 中秋の名月.
What Gregorian date is your family’s lunar occasion this year
The four anchor dates in this guide are easy to track: subscribe to a country’s public holiday feed. Google Calendar offers China holidays, South Korea holidays, Vietnam holidays, and Hong Kong holidays as one-click subscriptions under Settings → Add calendar → Browse calendars of interest, and each surfaces the major lunar-derived public holidays for that region.
But the date that genuinely trips people up every year isn’t on any holiday feed — it’s the family-specific lunar occasion. A grandparent’s lunar birthday, an ancestor’s lunar memorial date, the traditional Tanabata, or the lunar-15th full moon if you track the cycle: each has a fixed lunar date, drifts across the Gregorian calendar every year, and appears in no national holiday calendar. It is the exact same mechanism that puts Mid-Autumn on the 15th of the 8th lunar month yet on September 25 in 2026 and a different date the next year. Guessing from last year — “it was around August 20, so it’ll be close this year” — lands you 11 days off, and further off in a leap-month year.
The PiPi Worlds lunar calendar converter is built for exactly that one-off question. It handles solar-to-lunar and lunar-to-solar conversion across 1900–2100, surfaces the year/month/day sexagenary cycle (60-jiazi), and shows a dual-calendar grid where lunar and Gregorian dates appear side by side. Enter the lunar date of a family occasion and a year, and you get “this year it’s this Gregorian date, next year it’s that one” on the spot. Convert it once for the next 5 years, add all five as recurring calendar events, and you never have to run the annual “what Gregorian date is that this year” lookup again.
Why the four anchor dates matter
If you internalize only four dates from the 2026 lunar calendar, make them Lunar New Year on February 17, the Lantern Festival on March 3, Mid-Autumn on September 25, and Winter Solstice on December 22. Those four span the year, anchor the rest of the lunar observances, and cover the practical situations where lunar dates intrude into Gregorian planning — peak East Asian travel season, the spring’s first full moon, the September harvest peak, and the year-end pivot back toward longer days. The other dates can be looked up as needed, but the anchors make the rest of the lunar calendar legible without a converter open.