Chinese New Year in Shanghai: Celebrations & Festival Guide (2027)

Chinese New Year Shanghai celebrations (Spring Festival, 春节) turn the city inside out for about three weeks each winter. Locals leave for their hometowns and the office districts go quiet, while Yu Garden, the Bund and every shopping street in between disappear under red and gold. The next one falls on Saturday 6 February 2027, the Year of the Goat, and if you are reading this in mid-2026 you are at exactly the right point to plan it. This guide covers dates through 2030, what actually happens and when, what stays open, what the lanterns cost, and the honest case for and against timing a trip to land on it.

Table of Contents

• Dates: 2027, 2028 and Beyond
• The Public Holiday and How It Works
• What Chinese New Year Means
• Day by Day: What Happens When
• Chinese New Year Shanghai Celebrations: The Main Events
• Yu Garden Lantern Festival
• Temples on New Year’s Eve and Day One
• What’s Open and What’s Closed
• Travel Logistics and the Chunyun Crush
• Are the Celebrations Worth Planning Around?
• Eating Well When Half the City Is Shut
• Etiquette, Greetings and Red Envelopes
• Common Mistakes
• Practical Tips
• Frequently Asked Questions

Dates: 2027, 2028 and Beyond

Chinese New Year follows the lunisolar calendar, falling on the second new moon after the winter solstice. That puts it anywhere between 21 January and 20 February, which is why the date moves by up to a month year to year and why you cannot plan this trip on instinct.

Two of those dates matter more than the rest. 6 February 2027 is the next New Year’s Day and it lands on a Saturday, which pushes the holiday block into a naturally long weekend. 26 January 2028 is unusually early — barely three weeks after the Gregorian new year — so a 2028 trip will find the lanterns already up over the January period.

The festive window is longer than the date suggests. The season formally ends on the fifteenth day with the Lantern Festival (元宵节), which in 2027 falls on Saturday 20 February. Each venue puts up its decorations and runs its events on its own schedule, so check the listing for anywhere you plan to see.

The Public Holiday and How It Works

The official days off are set by China’s State Council in its annual holiday notice, published on gov.cn; the 2027 notice is the one to read before you fix flights. The lunar date itself is fixed: New Year’s Day falls on Saturday 6 February 2027. What you can rely on is the pattern.

Since the 2025 rule change, Spring Festival carries four statutory days rather than three, and New Year’s Eve is now part of the official break. In practice that produced the longest Spring Festival holiday on record in 2026: 15–23 February, nine consecutive days off, with 16–19 February as the statutory days and Saturdays 14 and 28 February worked as make-up days. In 2027 New Year’s Eve is Friday 5 February and New Year’s Day Saturday 6 February; the length of the block and any make-up days around it come from that notice.

Those make-up Saturdays catch people out. In 2026 both were ordinary working days, so look for any in the 2027 notice before you treat a Saturday near the holiday as a weekend. For how the rest of the year compares, see our best time to visit Shanghai guide and the month-by-month weather breakdown.

What Chinese New Year Means

Strip away the tourism framing and Spring Festival is a family holiday about going home. Nearly every tradition follows from that.

• Family reunion dinner on New Year’s Eve — the meal the entire migration exists to make possible
• Red envelopes (hongbao 红包) of money for children, unmarried relatives and service staff. Most of it now moves through WeChat rather than paper
• Fireworks historically; now banned inside Shanghai’s Outer Ring Road and restricted well beyond it
• Deep-cleaning before, no sweeping during — clear out the old year in advance, then avoid sweeping luck back out the door on day one
• Lion and dragon dances at temples, malls and public squares
• Visiting elders on day one and friends from day two onward
• Specific foods — dumplings for wealth, whole fish (鱼 yú, homophone for “surplus”), nian gao (年糕) for advancement, tangerines for luck

Shanghai adds its own layer. This is a Jiangnan city, so the reunion table leans towards eight-treasure rice, smoked fish, drunken chicken and shepherd’s-purse dumplings rather than the northern jiaozi marathon. Our traditional culture guide covers where those customs come from.

Day by Day: What Happens When

The fortnight has a rhythm, and knowing it tells you which days to book restaurants, which days to stay off the metro, and which day the city quietly comes back to life.

If you only have a few days and want the decoration without the closures, aim for the days after the first weekend, when more shops reopen and the lanterns are still lit.

Chinese New Year Shanghai Celebrations: The Main Events

Shanghai does not do a single citywide parade. The Chinese New Year Shanghai celebrations are a scatter of separate events, and knowing which are worth your evening saves a lot of wandering.

• Yuyuan Lantern Festival — the headline. Six zones, about five weeks in 2026, part ticketed and part free. Details below
• Longhua Temple midnight bell — the bell that sees out the old year at Shanghai’s oldest temple, 2853 Longhua Road
• Jing’an Temple and Jade Buddha Temple — first-incense crowds on day one, plus vegetarian meals and blessing ceremonies
• Bund and Lujiazui lighting — the riverfront façades and the Pudong towers run extended and often themed programmes across the holiday
• Shanghai Disneyland — a dedicated Spring Festival parade, decoration and merchandise run; see our Disneyland guide
• Happy Valley lantern event — a large ticketed lantern display; the resort’s own ticket listing has this season’s prices
• Guangfulin Cultural Site in Songjiang — an out-of-town option; its listing shows what is on over Spring Festival and whether exhibitions carry a separate ticket
• Zhujiajiao and the water towns — lanterns over the canals and a fraction of the Yu Garden crowd. See Zhujiajiao
• Mall programming — Xintiandi put on Spring Festival installations and performances in 2026; for IFC, K11, Plaza 66 and the rest, each mall’s own programme gives dates and entry
• Hotel reunion banquets — set gala menus on New Year’s Eve, booked and priced through each hotel directly

Yu Garden Lantern Festival

This is the reason to time a trip around Spring Festival rather than merely tolerate it. The Yuyuan lantern show has run for three decades, it is on the national intangible cultural heritage list, and it is genuinely a spectacle rather than a photo opportunity dressed up as one.

The 2026 edition, themed on the Year of the Horse, ran 26 January to 3 March and for the first time spilled beyond the bazaar, linking Yu Garden with Fuyou Road, Middle Fangbang Road, Gucheng Park, the BFC complex and the Bund into what the organisers called the Greater Yu Garden area. In 2027 New Year’s Day is 6 February and the Lantern Festival 20 February; the festival’s own run is set by Yuyuan Garden Malls, so check its listing for the dates.

What it costs

• Ticketed zone: the folk-art lantern zone inside Yu Garden itself — ¥80 adult, ¥50 child in 2026
• Free zones: Middle Fangbang Road, Fuyou Road, Gucheng Park, BFC and the Bund stretch. In 2026 five of the six zones cost nothing to walk through
• Booking: through the Yuyuan Garden Malls (豫园商城) WeChat service account and the major ticketing platforms. In 2026 sales opened a week before the festival and ran to the final day

Hours and the days to avoid

• Peak days (Fridays to Sundays, the Spring Festival holiday block and Lantern Festival night): entry from 2pm to 10pm
• Regular days: entry from 4pm to 10pm
• Closed on New Year’s Eve — in 2026 the whole thing shut on 16 February. Do not build your evening around it
• Best slot: a Tuesday or Wednesday, arriving around 5pm. You get the last of the daylight on the roofs, then the full effect as the lights come up, and you are out before the evening surge

Lantern Festival night itself is a crowded evening at the bazaar, and crowd control can slow the walk to a crawl. It is an experience, but not a relaxed one. For the garden the rest of the year, see our Yu Garden guide and the night markets guide.

Getting there: Metro Line 10 or 14 to Yuyuan Garden station, five minutes on foot. Some exits close for crowd flow during the festival, so follow the signage rather than your map app — our metro guide covers the basics.

Temples on New Year’s Eve and Day One

The temple side of the holiday is the part most visitors miss, partly because it happens at inconvenient hours and partly because nobody explains it.

Longhua Temple (2853 Longhua Road, Metro Line 11 or 12) is the oldest temple in Shanghai and the place to hear the midnight bell. A limited number of indoor tickets go on sale each year and the price moves; assume it sells out and check the temple’s own channels rather than a reseller. The courtyard is free and atmospheric enough.

Jing’an Temple and the Jade Buddha Temple (170 Anyuan Road) both draw first-incense crowds on day one. For the ritual without the scrum, go mid-morning on day two or three — still busy, still smoky, far more navigable. Our temples guide has hours and entry fees.

Incense is usually free or sold cheaply at the door, and three sticks is the standard offering. Do not buy the enormous bundles pressed on you outside the gate — that is a seasonal version of the classic Shanghai tourist scams.

What’s Open and What’s Closed

The headline is reassuring: the things you flew here for stay open. It is the everyday layer of the city that closes, and it closes unevenly.

The closure pattern is not random. Restaurants staffed by migrant workers from Anhui, Jiangsu or Sichuan shut because the staff have gone home; chains with local part-timers and hotel kitchens stay open. That is why a street of ten noodle shops can have nine dark windows and one queue out the door.

Travel Logistics and the Chunyun Crush

Chunyun (春运), the 40-day Spring Festival travel period, is the largest recurring movement of people on the planet. In 2026 it ran 2 February to 13 March and produced a record 9.4 billion inter-regional trips — 8.74 billion by road, 540 million by rail and 94.4 million by air, according to China’s Ministry of Transport. Those numbers are the context for every booking decision you make.

• High-speed rail sells out. Sales open on the 12306 system 14 days before departure (the 15-day window counts the day you buy), and popular Shanghai–Nanjing, Shanghai–Hangzhou and Shanghai–Beijing services can go within minutes. Each departure station has its own release time, so look it up on 12306 and set an alarm
• Domestic flights spike on the outbound days before the Eve and the return days at the end of the block
• International fares into Shanghai rise less, but the two or three days either side of New Year’s Eve are the expensive slots. Flying in a week early is cheaper and gets you the lanterns anyway
• Hotel rates in Shanghai itself often fall as business travel stops. See where to stay
• Taxis thin out on Eve and day one as drivers take the night off. Didi works but with longer waits — our Didi guide explains the app
• The metro is the reliable option throughout, and unusually pleasant midweek

The counterintuitive conclusion: Shanghai itself is easy to be in during the actual holiday days, with the metro running and the big sights open. It is getting to and from Shanghai, and any day trip out of it, that becomes hard. Building a plan that stays inside the city for the peak days and saves Suzhou or Hangzhou for the tail end of the fortnight works far better than the reverse.

Are the Chinese New Year Shanghai Celebrations Worth Planning Around?

Honest answer: it depends less on your tolerance for crowds than on what you came for.

Come during CNY if

• You want the lantern festival — the one thing Shanghai does at this time of year that nowhere else does the same way
• You are staying put in the city rather than hopping between provinces
• You care about atmosphere more than about eating in one specific restaurant
• You are travelling with children — decorations, lion dances and Disneyland programming all land well. See Shanghai with kids

Come at another time if

• Your itinerary depends on bullet-train day trips during the holiday block
• Eating your way through the city is the point — a chunk of the good small places will be shut
• Cold, damp weather bothers you. February averages a high of 10.7°C and a low of 4.1°C at the Xujiahui station (1991–2020 normals), and it is a wet cold

The compromise most people should take

Arrive one to two weeks before New Year’s Day. The lanterns are up and lit, every restaurant is open, hotel rates are still low and the trains still have seats. For 2027 that means landing between roughly 22 January and 2 February. Stay on through New Year’s Eve (Friday 5 February) and New Year’s Day (Saturday 6 February) and you add the midnight bell and the day-one temple scenes to everything else. Our Shanghai in winter guide covers the wider season.

Eating Well When Half the City Is Shut

This is where an unprepared trip goes wrong. The fix is boring but effective: decide your dinners before you fly.

• Book the Eve and day-one dinners in advance. Hotel restaurants and banquet halls take reservations from about a month out and fill up. Eve set menus are priced per person at some places and per table at others, so ask which when you book
• Hotel breakfast earns its keep this week — the corner baozi stall you were relying on may be shuttered
• Chains stay open. Not glamorous, but Yang’s Dumplings, Haidilao and the mall food courts trade right through
• Seasonal specifics: tangyuan around the Lantern Festival, nian gao stir-fried with pork and greens, eight-treasure rice, and a whole steamed fish that is deliberately not finished so the “surplus” carries into next year
• Delivery apps keep running at reduced coverage and with surcharges

For the rest of the time, our food guide, street food guide and restaurant picks cover the ground.

Etiquette, Greetings and Red Envelopes

Nobody expects a visitor to get this perfect, and the effort counts for a great deal more than the accuracy.

• “Xīn nián kuài lè” (新年快乐) — happy new year, universal and safe
• “Gōng xǐ fā cái” (恭喜发财) — wishing you prosperity. Widely used and always well received
• “Wàn shì rú yì” (万事如意) — may everything go as you wish. A slightly more formal option
• Red envelopes for staff who look after you — a doorman, a driver, a guide. The amount is your call. Hand it over with both hands
• Amounts matter. Even numbers are lucky, eight especially; avoid four, which sounds like the word for death. ¥88 is a classic, ¥40 is not
• Avoid gifts of clocks, shoes, sharp objects, umbrellas or anything white — each carries an unfortunate homophone or funerary association
• Wear red or something bright on the first day; head-to-toe black reads as mourning
• Do not sweep, wash your hair or break things on day one, at least not visibly

Our etiquette guide and customs guide cover the everyday rules, and the language guide has more phrases worth having.

Common Mistakes

• Assuming everything shuts. It does not. The big attractions run extended hours and are frequently at their best
• Assuming nothing shuts. The restaurant you bookmarked six months ago has a good chance of being dark for a week
• Planning a day trip during the holiday block. Train seats vanish and the water towns are at their most crowded of the year
• Turning up at Yu Garden on New Year’s Eve expecting lanterns — the ticketed zone closed entirely that night in 2026
• Booking rail too early. Tickets go on sale 14 days before departure (the 15-day window counts the day you buy), so there is nothing to buy before then
• Underdressing. Buildings are not always well heated and the damp cuts through. Our packing checklist is calibrated for this
• Expecting fireworks downtown. Banned inside the Outer Ring Road; the light shows are the replacement

Practical Tips

• Book hotels 6–10 weeks ahead for holiday-week arrival, and reserve New Year’s Eve dinner at the same time
• Visit the lanterns on a weeknight, arriving around 5pm
• Carry a few small red packets and small notes for tips and gifts
• Mobile payment covers almost everything; cash is a fallback rather than a plan
• Layer properly — Xujiahui’s 1991–2020 February normals are 10.7°C by day and 4.1°C at night, with 10.4 days of at least 0.1 mm of rain across the month. A packable down layer and a waterproof shell beat a heavy coat
• Keep day one flexible — treat it as a temple morning and a long lunch, not a full itinerary
• The Bund is the reliable evening throughout the fortnight; see the Bund at night
• Free options multiply during the holiday. Our free attractions guide pairs well with this week
• Buy souvenirs late — bazaar prices peak in the run-up and soften after day five. See the souvenirs guide

Frequently Asked Questions

When is Chinese New Year in Shanghai?

The next one is Saturday 6 February 2027, the Year of the Goat. After that: 26 January 2028 (Monkey), 13 February 2029 (Rooster) and 3 February 2030 (Dog). The festival’s fifteen days run from New Year’s Day to the Lantern Festival — 6 to 20 February in 2027 — with the celebrations starting the night before, on New Year’s Eve.

How long is the Chinese New Year holiday in China?

Eight or nine days in recent years. The 2026 holiday ran 15–23 February, nine days, the longest on record, with four statutory days and two make-up working Saturdays either side. For 2027, New Year’s Day is Saturday 6 February, and the official days off are set in the State Council’s 2027 holiday notice on gov.cn.

Is it worth visiting Shanghai during Chinese New Year celebrations?

Yes, with one condition: plan to stay in the city. The lantern festival, the decorated old streets and the temple ceremonies are worth the trip, and hotel rates often drop. Train day trips during the holiday block are the part that does not work.

Is Shanghai crowded during Chinese New Year?

Less crowded in the office districts and on the metro, more crowded at Yu Garden, the temples and Disneyland. Many residents leave the city and domestic tourists partly replace them at the sights.

Are restaurants open during Chinese New Year in Shanghai?

Hotel restaurants, chains, mall food courts and tourist-area places stay open. Independent neighbourhood restaurants often close for several days around New Year’s Eve and reopen at different times, so check with a restaurant before you go.

How much does the Yu Garden Lantern Festival cost?

The ticketed folk-art zone inside Yu Garden was ¥80 for adults and ¥50 for children in 2026. The surrounding zones — Fangbang Road, Fuyou Road, Gucheng Park, BFC and the Bund stretch — are free to walk through.

Are fireworks allowed in Shanghai for Chinese New Year?

No, not inside the Outer Ring Road, where setting off fireworks is completely banned. Restricted zones also apply beyond it around transport hubs, hospitals, schools, heritage sites and shopping areas, and permits are required for organised displays. Coordinated building lighting has replaced fireworks downtown.

What is the Longhua Temple bell ceremony?

Longhua Temple’s great bell is rung by the monks to see out the old year. Indoor tickets are limited and sell out; the courtyard is free and still worth standing in.

When should I book trains for Chinese New Year travel?

The moment sales open on the 12306 system, 14 days before departure: the 15-day sale window includes the day of purchase. Popular routes out of Shanghai can sell out within minutes at peak. Nothing can be booked earlier — the inventory does not exist until then.

What is chunyun and does it affect tourists?

Chunyun is the 40-day Spring Festival travel period — 9.4 billion trips in 2026, including 540 million by rail. It affects you mainly through train availability and domestic flight prices. Inside Shanghai it barely registers.

What should I wear in Shanghai in February?

Layers plus a windproof shell. Daytime highs average 10.7°C and nights about 4.1°C (Xujiahui, 1991–2020), and the damp makes it feel colder than the number suggests.

Can I still see the lanterns if I visit after Chinese New Year?

Yes. The Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day, 20 February in 2027, is the traditional close of the season, and the 2026 Yuyuan display stayed lit right up to it. Yuyuan Garden Malls sets each year’s closing date, so confirm it before planning a late visit.

Plan Your Trip

Combine with our pillar guides on best time to visit Shanghai, Shanghai in winter, and Yu Garden, and check things to do in Shanghai for the rest of the itinerary. Official festival announcements are published by the Shanghai Municipal Government, and for background see Chinese New Year on Wikipedia and Chunyun.

Photo credits.

Yuyuan lantern display: 豫园庙会04037 by Augusthaiho, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Shanghai skyline lantern sculptures: 豫园灯会04039 by Augusthaiho, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.