Chinese Public Holidays 2027: Dates, Factories and Order Planning

Seven festivals structure the Chinese administrative year. Four of them follow the lunisolar calendar, meaning their calendar date shifts every year and can be calculated years in advance, independently of any administrative decision. The other three fall on a fixed date in the solar calendar. In both cases, the exact length of the holiday and the make-up working days are only set by an annual decree from the State Council, published at the end of the previous year.

Here are the calendar dates for 2027, with their status as of the date this article was written, 26 September 2026.

A provisional calendar date is not a confirmed public holiday. The lunar calendar fixes the date of the festival day itself, but only the State Council decides how many days off are attached to it and which Saturdays or Sundays will be worked in compensation, a mechanism called make-up days or tiaoxiu (调休). Tiaoxiu is the Chinese practice of shifting a working day onto a weekend to artificially extend a long weekend, without reducing the total number of working days in the year.

For 2026, the official notice was published on 4 November 2025, as a notification from the General Office of the State Council. It set, among other things, a Chinese New Year extended to nine consecutive days off, with make-up work on Saturdays 14 and 28 February 2026. Following this same publication schedule, the 2027 notice is expected in late October or November 2026, that is after this article goes live. Until that text is published, no holiday length or make-up arrangement can be announced as certain for 2027, including for the 6 February Chinese New Year.

Not all Chinese festivals halt production to the same extent. Chinese New Year and the October National Day cause most of the disruption, because they trigger a mass movement of people: a large share of workers from rural areas or another province return to their families, often for several weeks in the case of Chinese New Year. Qingming, Labour Day, the Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival generally give three days of official holiday, without that same exodus, and most factories resume their pace as soon as they reopen.

This difference in scale does not excuse skipping preparation for short festivals. An order still in production on the day of a three-day shutdown sees its schedule slip by the same amount, and customs offices close too. In 2026, for example, the Mid-Autumn Festival from 25 to 27 September left only three working days before the 1 October Golden Week opened, tightening the loading schedule for exporters caught between the two festivals.

Before each shutdown, shippers rush to get their goods out in time, which tightens available space on ships and planes and pushes freight rates up. On ocean freight, carriers adjust their capacity through blank sailings or port omissions, which unbalances container availability and can leave cargo stranded on the quay if the booking arrives too late.

After reopening, traffic does not immediately return to normal: shipping lines take several days, sometimes several weeks for National Day, to get back to their usual pace. For the October Golden Week, this effect is documented by transport analysts, who cite a one to two week recovery period after reopening, the time it takes suppliers, warehouses and carriers to clear the backlog.

The principle is the same for every festival, only the safety margin changes according to its scale: start from the factory's shutdown date, not the desired delivery date, then work backward through production time, quality control and transport. For Chinese New Year and National Day, add a margin of two to three weeks, because production lead times lengthen as the shutdown approaches and factories rarely announce their exact closing date early in the year.

A typical preparation schedule, applicable to every major 2027 shutdown, is built by working backward from the chosen closing date.

These four festivals generally last three days and do not trigger a mass departure of workers, but they deserve systematic checking with every supplier, because their date changes every year. Qingming, on 5 April 2027, generally coincides with a seasonal order peak for several spring sectors, which can lengthen lead times if the shutdown is not anticipated. 1 May, a fixed date, sometimes comes with a multi-day long weekend depending on the annual decree, to be confirmed once published.

The Dragon Boat Festival, on 9 June 2027, and Mid-Autumn Festival, on 15 September 2027, both fall on a Wednesday, which leaves the long-weekend question open: the annual decree specifies whether the neighbouring working days are folded into the holiday. For these four festivals, the most reliable approach remains asking the supplier for its precise closing date and shipping deadline, rather than relying on a generic calendar.

Sorva tracks the real closing schedule of every factory we work with, short or long festival, and adjusts your order's production and transport plan accordingly. Our Chinese-speaking team in Guangzhou confirms directly with the workshop its closing dates, its loading deadline and its production capacity before each shutdown, as soon as the year's official decree is published.

In most cases, you do not pay any fees: you open a case, we negotiate the goods for you, and we take a commission on their value ex-factory. A pre-shipment inspection and a monthly follow-up of your order help secure the busy periods of the year without you spending your own time on it.