Last updated: October 2026
China's travel seasons are shaped by its festivals, and the run from October to February is the richest of them all. National Day opens it in early October, Christmas and New Year follow, and Spring Festival closes it in February. Here is what happens in each one, where to see it, and how far ahead to book.
When is China's National Day holiday in 2026?
The National Day holiday runs October 1 to 7, 2026, Thursday to Wednesday, and it remains the single busiest domestic travel window of the year. Two makeup working days bracket it: Sunday, September 20 and Saturday, October 10, which is how the country produces seven consecutive days off.
The Mid-Autumn Festival holiday sat just before it, from September 25 to 27, 2026, with no makeup day. Because only three working days separated the two breaks, a large share of domestic travelers took those three days as annual leave and stitched together a 13-day run. In practice the congestion starts on September 25 and only eases after October 7.
Both dates come from the State Council General Office notice for 2026, published on November 4, 2025. If you want the operational detail behind that window — train ticket release times, attraction reservations, visa-free entry — it is all in our Golden Week 2026 guide.
What actually happens across the country during National Day?
National Day is a civic celebration rather than a family one. City squares are dressed in red, main avenues get flower displays, landmark buildings are lit, and cultural districts stage themed performances for the full week. Every city does its own version, and the differences are what make the week worth planning around.
Beijing: the flag-raising ceremony and the flower displays
The centerpiece is the flag-raising ceremony at Tiananmen Square at dawn on October 1. In 2026 the guard marched out of the Tiananmen gate shortly after 6 a.m. in front of a crowd of around 101,000 people, the anthem played as the flag rose, and doves were released over the square afterwards. It is free to attend, and it is the one National Day event that visitors from abroad consistently describe as worth the early alarm.
The same week brings the annual flower displays. In 2026 the Chang'an Avenue installations carried the theme of the 90th anniversary of the Long March at Jianguomen, and a galloping-horse design at Fuxingmen, while a large flower basket stood in the center of the square. The displays stay up for several weeks, so you do not have to be there on October 1 to see them.
Two practical notes: Tiananmen Square has its own reservation system, bookable up to 10 days ahead, and the flag ceremony requires a dedicated time slot within it. Carry your passport — the reservation is tied to it.
Xi'an: Tang dynasty pageantry on the City Wall and at the Great Tang All Day Mall
Xi'an leans into its Tang heritage harder than any other city during the holiday. The 2026 program is a good picture of what to expect each year:
- Xi'an City Wall. A Tang-style parade with armored guards marched the wall under the banner of a Long March through Chang'an; all four gates hung national flags; themed light shows ran on the south gate and the city corners; and free Qin opera performances were staged at the southwest corner.
- Great Tang All Day Mall. The pedestrian district ran an immersive Tang street with two headline productions — a tribute-ceremony show built around six storylines converging on one scene, and a poetry-themed show — plus a stamp-collecting route that sent visitors to twelve Tang poets' stations across the district, and a lantern-lighting ceremony with a light show in the evening. During the holiday the mall's performances all finished before 5 p.m., so plan an early afternoon arrival rather than a late one.
- Tang Paradise. Lakeside lighting was upgraded for the holiday, the signature Tang shows continued, and a National Day parade was added, along with hands-on classical pastimes such as pitch-pot, tea whisking and rubbing workshops in the garden pavilions.
- Chang'an Twelve Hours. The themed block reopened a new street for the holiday, with a daytime parade and a mass lantern-lighting in the evening.
One booking rule applies all week: the Terracotta Army runs on timed, real-name advance tickets. Anchor your Xi'an dates on that ticket before you fix anything else.
Shanghai: the Bund, the river and the old city
Shanghai's National Day is a light-and-water affair. The Bund and the Pudong skyline run special evening illumination, evening Huangpu River cruises sell out days ahead, and the old city around Yu Garden and the pedestrian stretch of Nanjing Road carry the heaviest foot traffic in the city. If you want the skyline without the crush, book a river cruise for a weeknight rather than the first weekend, and use the elevated walkways rather than the Bund promenade itself.
Guangzhou: October belongs to the Canton Fair
Guangzhou's October is defined less by National Day than by the Canton Fair, which turns the city into a business travel hub for three weeks. The 140th session runs in three phases:
| Phase | Dates (2026) | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Phase 1 | October 15 to 19 | Advanced manufacturing, electronics, new energy, robotics |
| Phase 2 | October 23 to 27 | Home and quality living, building materials, gifts, ceramics |
| Phase 3 | October 31 to November 4 | Lifestyle, fashion, toys, health and medical, food |
The fair covers roughly 1.55 million square meters. Hotel rates in Guangzhou peak across those three weeks, not across National Day, so if your trip is for business, book accommodation the moment your phase is confirmed.
What does Christmas look like in China?
Christmas is not a public holiday in mainland China, and for the overwhelming majority of people it carries no religious meaning. The statutory holidays are New Year's Day, Spring Festival, Qingming, Labor Day, Dragon Boat, Mid-Autumn and National Day — Christmas is not among them.
What it is instead is a commercial and social season, and a very visible one in the largest cities. Shopping centres and five-star hotel lobbies start installing trees and lighting in November; the decoration runs through to early January. Shanghai has the densest concentration, in the Jing'an and Xintiandi retail districts and around the Bund; Beijing's version lives in Sanlitun, the CBD malls and the international hotels; Shenzhen and Hangzhou follow the same pattern.
For visitors from abroad this produces an unusual and rather enjoyable result: a Western holiday with none of the domestic obligations attached to it, in cities that are otherwise decorated for winter. Restaurants and hotel restaurants do book out for Christmas Eve, so reserve several weeks ahead if you want a specific table.
Two things to note about the wider Christmas season. First, unlike National Day and Spring Festival, it does not trigger a national transport surge, which makes it the quietest and best-value window of the Chinese winter. Second, if you want a full public-holiday Christmas with the most elaborate displays in the country, that is Hong Kong, China and Macao, China, where December 25 and 26 are public holidays.
What happens at New Year in China?
New Year's Day, January 1, is a statutory holiday, and the usual arrangement is three days. In 2026 it ran January 1 to 3. For 2027, January 1 falls on a Friday and the same three-day pattern is expected; the exact arrangement is published by the State Council General Office in November, roughly two months ahead.
The most distinctive New Year event is the bell-ringing at Hanshan Temple in Suzhou, which has run since 1979 and is one of the longest continuously held New Year events in the country. The temple's abbot strikes the great bell for the first time at 23:42 and the 108th strike lands exactly at midnight; 108 is the traditional number, held to dispel the 108 worldly troubles. The 47th edition ran from the evening of December 31, 2025 into the early hours of January 1, 2026, with ticketed entry to the temple grounds and a free, advance-reserved pass for the surrounding Fengqiao scenic area.
Elsewhere the season is quieter than either Golden Week or Spring Festival: big-city countdowns, the opening weeks of the ski season in the north, and the Harbin ice park entering its peak. If your priority is seeing China without fighting for it, New Year is the best of the three windows.
When is Spring Festival 2027, and why does it matter so much?
Spring Festival is the one that shapes everything, because it drives the largest annual movement of people on earth.
- Chinese New Year's Day: Saturday, February 6, 2027 — the first day of the Year of the Goat.
- New Year's Eve: Friday, February 5, 2027.
- Lantern Festival: Saturday, February 20, 2027, which closes the traditional fifteen-day celebration.
The lunar dates fix the mood; the public holiday fixes the demand. The State Council General Office usually publishes the holiday calendar the previous November, so the 2027 arrangement is not yet available. The 2026 Spring Festival ran from February 15 to 23 — nine consecutive days, and the longest on record. Under the revised national holiday rules, when New Year's Eve falls on a Friday the Spring Festival break can reach nine days, which is exactly the case in 2027. Treat nine days as the working assumption, but confirm the published dates before you commit to flights.
The travel period around it, known as chunyun, is longer still. In 2026 it ran for 40 days and moved 9.41 billion cross-region trips, with rail alone carrying 538 million passengers across the window.
On the ground, Spring Festival looks unlike anything in the Western calendar: temple fairs in Beijing, lantern festivals on the Xi'an City Wall and in Shanghai's old city, reunion dinners, and red decorations in every street. The counter-intuitive detail worth knowing is that the first two or three days of the holiday are usually the calmest at major sites, because families stay home; the crowds build from the third day onward.
If February 2027 is on your shortlist, our guide to planning a China trip around Chinese New Year 2027 covers the chunyun dates, what closes and what stays open, and a sample eight-day itinerary.
How far ahead should you book each part of the trip?
Lead times differ sharply by item and by season. The table below reflects what the booking windows actually allow, not a general rule of thumb.
| Item | Christmas and New Year | Spring Festival 2027 |
|---|---|---|
| International flights | 2 to 3 months ahead | 3 to 5 months ahead |
| High-speed rail | 15 days before departure | 15 days before departure |
| Hotels in holiday weeks | 6 to 8 weeks ahead | 6 to 8 weeks ahead, earlier for the holiday week itself |
| Capped attractions | As soon as the window opens | As soon as the window opens |
| Harbin ice park | About 1 week ahead | About 1 week ahead |
Three mechanics matter more than the numbers:
- High-speed rail cannot be booked early. Tickets go on sale 15 days before departure, counting the travel day, on the official 12306 app and website. Foreign passports need identity verification first, which takes time to clear, so set that up before the window opens rather than on the day. Our guide to booking train tickets with a foreign passport walks through it.
- Capped attractions sell out, not up. The Palace Museum in Beijing releases its quota at 20:00 Beijing time exactly seven days ahead and sells no same-day tickets. The Terracotta Army and Tiananmen Square run comparable real-name systems. Anchor each day on one of these bookings and treat everything else as flexible.
- Visas should be checked before anything else is booked. China's unilateral 30-day visa-free scheme covers 50 countries, but for 48 of them it currently runs only to December 31, 2026, with Russia covered to December 31, 2027 and Brunei without an end date. At the time of writing no extension into 2027 has been announced. The current position, and the 240-hour visa-free transit alternative, are set out in our 2026 visa-free policy guide.
How do you see the festival season without fighting the crowds?
- Use the shoulder days. During National Day, October 4 to 7 is lighter than October 1 to 3. During Spring Festival, the first three days are lighter than the rest of the week.
- Choose secondary cities. Chengdu, Xi'an, Guilin, Hangzhou and Kunming absorb holiday volume far better than Beijing and Shanghai.
- Anchor each day on one hard booking. Confirm the Palace Museum or the Terracotta Army date before you commit to flights or hotels.
- Travel against the pattern. Most domestic travelers move outward on the first day of a holiday and return on the last. Arriving when they are leaving is worth more than any queue-skipping ticket.
- Pack for the season. February in the north is genuinely cold, and the temperature gap between Harbin and Guangzhou exceeds 30 degrees Celsius. Our season-by-season packing checklist covers the gear that matters.
- Work with a China-based operator where it counts. The scarce items in every one of these windows are trains, hotel rooms in the holiday week and timed-entry tickets. Those are released on Chinese platforms, at Chinese times, and they clear fast.
Frequently asked questions
When is China's National Day holiday in 2026?
October 1 to 7, 2026, from Thursday to Wednesday, with September 20 and October 10 designated as makeup working days. The Mid-Autumn holiday ran September 25 to 27, 2026.
Is Christmas a public holiday in China?
No. Christmas is not a statutory holiday in mainland China and is not widely observed as a religious occasion. It is a commercial and social season marked by shopping-centre and hotel decorations from November into early January. December 25 and 26 are public holidays in Hong Kong, China and Macao, China.
When is Chinese New Year in 2027?
Saturday, February 6, 2027, the first day of the Year of the Goat. New Year's Eve is Friday, February 5, and the Lantern Festival falls on Saturday, February 20, 2027.
How long is the Spring Festival holiday in 2027?
The exact arrangement has not been published yet; it is normally released the previous November. The 2026 holiday ran nine days, from February 15 to 23, and because New Year's Eve falls on a Friday in 2027 the rules allow a nine-day break again.
Can I visit China visa-free during these holidays?
For many passports, yes. China's unilateral visa-free scheme covers 50 countries for stays of up to 30 days, but for 48 of them the current arrangement runs to December 31, 2026, so it covers Christmas, New Year and the 2027 Spring Festival only if it is extended. Travelers from 57 countries can instead use the 240-hour visa-free transit scheme, which requires onward travel to a third country. Check your passport against both before booking.
How far in advance should I book a Spring Festival trip?
International flights three to five months ahead, hotels six to eight weeks ahead, and capped attractions the moment their booking window opens. Domestic train tickets cannot be booked more than 15 days ahead, so build the rest of the trip around that limit rather than around a fixed train.
The festival calendar is predictable, but the inventory inside it is not. If you are planning around National Day, Christmas, New Year or Spring Festival 2027, tell us your dates and we will tell you what is still bookable — LinkedTours runs inbound leisure tours, business travel and study tours into China, with teams in Beijing, Shanghai and Xi'an who book the moment each window opens. You can see the wider booking sequence in our China trip planning timeline, or start from how many days you need in China.