Chinese New Year falls on 6 February 2027. To receive goods before the factory closures, the schedule is built backwards, and it is decided now.
Chinese New Year 2027 falls on Saturday 6 February, with the eve on the 5th. For an importer, the date matters less than what surrounds it: factories that close earlier and reopen later than the official calendar, and weeks of fully booked departures just before. An order that must arrive before the break is therefore decided in the autumn, not in January.
How many public holidays in China?
Since 1 January 2025, the Spring Festival has four statutory public holidays in mainland China: New Year's Eve and the first three days of the lunar year. The same regulation allows "bridge" days to be arranged each year, creating a longer break than the public holidays alone.
The official 2027 calendar, with these bridge days, has not yet been published at the time of writing. The dates of New Year itself, however, are fixed: Hong Kong has already set its public holidays around 6 February.
Why factories close for longer than the calendar says
For many workers, the festival is their only trip home to family each year, often to the other side of the country. Workshops therefore empty before the public holidays and fill up slowly afterwards: some employees do not come back, others need training. Production restarts in stages, and the quality of the first runs suffers.
So you should not think in terms of public holidays, but of a disrupted production period, and ask each supplier: their last shipment date, their reopening date, and the day they are back to full capacity.
Build the schedule backwards
The right starting point is the date you need the goods in the warehouse. You then work back through each step:
- Transit, from port of loading to your warehouse: our calculator estimates it for your pair of cities and your transport mode.
- Booking space on board, which takes longer to secure as the break approaches, when everyone wants to ship at the same time.
- The pre-shipment inspection, to be scheduled before the factory's last pickup date, not after.
- Production, based on the lead time confirmed by the supplier, not the usual lead time.
- Approval of the samples and the order, which unlocks everything else.
If the total goes past the factory's closing date, the order will not leave before New Year. Better to know today than to find out in January.
What happens in the final weeks
Just before the break, factories finish everything they can and demand for space concentrates on the same departures. This is when delays pile up: production that slips by a few days can mean missing the last suitable vessel, and the goods then wait for the restart on the quay or at the factory.
- Ask each supplier in writing for their closing, reopening and last shipment dates.
- Schedule the inspection before the last week of production, while it is still possible to correct things.
- Plan stock to cover the break and the restart, not just the public holidays.
- For a small urgent volume, compare groupage, container and air rather than sticking to your usual mode.
Our calculator gives the lead time and cost of each mode on your route. When the volume is borderline, our post on the tipping point between groupage and container helps you decide, and the one on the documents that hold goods up at the port avoids nasty surprises on arrival. The earlier the order is locked in, the more choice remains.
