The Manufacturing CalendarWhen the factories stop, and what it costs you.
Every closure that moves a production date — China first, then the rest of the sourcing world — with what each holiday actually is, how long a plant really loses, and what it means for your program.
Most programs do not miss a date because a factory was slow. They miss it because nobody counted the weeks the factory would be shut. This page is the reference we plan against: the dates, the day of the week each one falls on, what the holiday is, and how much time a program loses in practice rather than on paper.
The China manufacturing calendar
The closures every schedule is built around. Two of them decide the year.
Chinese public holiday dates are set annually by the PRC State Council and are normally published late in the preceding year, so 2027 is indicative until the notice lands. What does not change is the shape of the year: capacity and freight rates tighten hard before Chinese New Year and again ahead of the fourth-quarter retail season, and factories commonly extend closures by several days on either side of both.
Shorter and gentler than Spring Festival, because the workforce travels domestically and comes back. The practical window is 09/25/2026 FRI through 10/16/2026 FRI — roughly three weeks, and in 2026 it is worse than usual because Mid-Autumn closes the plant for three days immediately before it. The real damage here is not the factory, it is the freight: this is the wall in front of every holiday-season delivery.
In 2026 Mid-Autumn falls on 09/25 FRI and closes the plant for three days, so the run-up to Golden Week is already broken before it starts. Whatever must ship in Q4 needs to be on the water before this week, not during it — ocean rates peak here and rolled bookings are routine.
National Day. A full national stop, both years, with no production, QC or customs clearance. One working Saturday on 10/10/2026 SAT pays part of it back. Unlike Spring Festival the workforce mostly travels domestically and returns, which is why the recovery is shorter.
Staff come back largely intact, so lines restart in days rather than weeks. The constraint moves to freight: everything that was held for the holiday hits the port at once, and space out of Yantian and Shanghai is the tightest of the year.
The published holiday is the smallest part of it. A plant winds down for roughly a fortnight before the date and rebuilds its workforce for two to three weeks after it, so the realistic planning window is 01/23/2027 SAT through 03/05/2027 FRI — about six weeks in which you should not expect a normal production week. Treat the whole span as closed and you will never be wrong; treat the eight days as the closure and you will miss a date.
Factory workers start leaving for home before the official date to beat the travel crush — some lines drop to partial manning a full fortnight early. Sub-suppliers of components, printing and packaging close first, so a plant can be open and still unable to finish your order. Freight is at its annual peak and space is booked out.
The State Council holiday, indicative until the annual notice publishes late in 2026. Nothing runs: no production, no QC, no loading, no customs brokerage, no one answering email. The new year itself falls on 02/06/2027 SAT — the Year of the Fire Goat.
The gates reopen on paper. In practice staff return in waves over two to three weeks, and a share never return at all — they take work closer to home, so lines are rebuilt with new hands. Expect reduced output, longer cycle times, and first-run quality that needs watching.
Chinese New Year is Thanksgiving week, Christmas and the last flight out of a hub airport all landing at once. Everyone in the country is trying to move at the same time, everyone in the world is trying to ship before it, and the price of both reflects that. You do not negotiate your way through that week — you plan around it.
What each holiday actually is — what it commemorates, what a family does on the day, and how long the plant is dark for it. Six closures, and only two of them decide a production date.
春节 · the Spring Festival, the start of the lunar year. Families travel home for a reunion dinner on new year’s eve, settle debts, hand out red envelopes and set off fireworks to see the old year out. It is the one long holiday most of the workforce takes all year, and for the many who work far from where they grew up, the only week they reliably see their own children. Nine official days in 2026 — the longest on record.
国庆节 · the founding of the People’s Republic on 10/01/1949. Seven days of parades, flag ceremonies and the largest domestic travel week on earth — several hundred million trips inside one week. The second of the two full national stops, and the one that sits directly in front of the Q4 shipping deadline.
中秋节 · the harvest moon, on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month. Families gather to eat mooncakes and look at the fullest moon of the year; the round cake and the round moon both stand for reunion. Companies gift boxes of mooncakes to staff and customers — including, most years, to us. Three days.
清明节 · Tomb-Sweeping Day. Families visit ancestral graves to clear the weeds, lay flowers and food, and burn incense and paper offerings. It is remembrance rather than celebration, and it doubles as the first outing of spring. Three days, and the shortest interruption on the calendar.
端午节 · the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. It commemorates Qu Yuan, a poet and minister who drowned himself in 278 BC in protest at his state’s corruption; villagers raced boats out to save him and beat drums to scare the fish. Today: boat races and sticky-rice zongzi. Three days.
劳动节 · International Workers’ Day, marked in China since 1949 and extended into a five-day break by borrowing a weekend. A domestic travel holiday rather than a family one. Five days in 2026, paid for with a working Saturday on 05/09/2026 SAT — and the last clear stop before the summer.
Both years, month by month, with every closure marked. Filled days are the two closures that decide a year; ringed days are the short ones; the light band after Spring Festival is the fortnight when a plant is officially open and not yet at full capacity.
China pays for its long breaks with working weekends. Six weekend days in the 2026 notice are official working days, so a plant can be running on a Saturday you wrote off and shut on a Monday you counted.
Golden Week only became a week in 1999. The State Council extended National Day deliberately, to create a domestic travel and consumption holiday — which is exactly why it empties a factory rather than merely closing an office.
We schedule backwards from your in-store date and put the closures on the plan as blocked days before quoting a ready date, so a holiday is a known block rather than a surprise. If a run cannot clear Chinese New Year, the honest answer is to move the date or the quantity — not to promise the calendar will behave.
Manufacturing calendars around the world
China is not the only calendar that moves. Every sourcing country has weeks it does not work.
Dual-sourcing only protects a date if the second country closes at a different time — and often it does not. Vietnam keeps the same lunar new year as China, and factories in Taiwan and Korea can be open while the Chinese plant making their components is shut. Lunar and Islamic holidays move against the Gregorian calendar every year, so a ship date that cleared the holiday last season will not necessarily clear it this one. Lengths below are what we plan around in practice, which is usually longer than the official notice.
Golden Week · 10/01/2026 THU – 10/07/2026 WED — National Day, the second week the country travels at once.
Mid-Autumn · 09/25/2026 FRI — the harvest moon, a short family closure.
National Day · 09/02/2026 WED — independence, declared 1945. A short closure.
Reunification + Labour · 04/30/2026 THU – 05/01/2026 FRI.
Holi · 03/03/2026 TUE — the spring festival of colour, usually a single day.
Independence Day · 08/15/2026 SAT.
Eid al-Adha · 05/27/2026 WED, then 05/16/2027 SUN, approx. — the feast of sacrifice, at the close of the Hajj.
Kurban Bayramı · 05/27/2026 WED, approx. — Eid al-Adha.
Republic Day · 10/29/2026 THU. August slowdown — not a holiday, a habit.
Chuseok · 09/24/2026 THU – 09/26/2026 SAT — the Korean harvest festival, families returning to ancestral homes. Korean Thanksgiving.
Liberation Day · 08/15/2026 SAT (Korea).
Guadalupe-Reyes · 12/12/2026 SAT – 01/06/2027 WED — the long December run from the Virgin of Guadalupe to Three Kings’ Day.
Independence · 09/16/2026 WED.
Christmas · 12/25/2026 FRI — through the new year across most of the region.
Easter · 04/05/2026 SUN.
Labor Day · 09/07/2026 MON — the unofficial end of summer, and the last clean week before Q4 decorating work floods domestic shops.
Thanksgiving · 11/26/2026 THU — the harvest holiday, and the week the country travels.
Christmas to New Year · 12/25/2026 FRI onward — reduced shifts more than full closure.
Before a date is promised we check the closure calendar of the country the order is actually running in, not the country the brand thinks of as “overseas.” If a program cannot clear a closure, we say so at the brief — while the date or the quantity can still move.
Where the two calendars collide
Four windows in the year when a US brand and a Chinese factory are working against each other.
A US holiday rarely moves a factory date. It moves an approval date — and an approval date moves the factory date. These are the four windows where the American and Chinese calendars pull in opposite directions, and where most missed launches are actually decided.
Chinese New Year against a US retail reset
US buyers set spring floor dates in January, exactly when Chinese lines are winding down for the Spring Festival. A brief approved in late January is competing with a factory trying to close its books before staff leave. Anything wanted in-store for spring should have been quoted in November.
Mid-Autumn plus Golden Week against US holiday floor dates
In 2026 Mid-Autumn (09/25/2026 FRI) and Golden Week (10/01/2026 THU – 10/07/2026 WED) sit ten days apart, so China effectively loses a fortnight at the precise moment US programs need goods on the water for November and December. Bookings made after Golden Week are fighting every other brand on earth for the same containers.
US shutdown against a Chinese factory still running
The pattern reverses. Chinese plants work through late December, but US offices, freight brokers and customs brokers thin out from Thanksgiving (11/26/2026 THU) onward. Approvals, not production, become the bottleneck — an artwork sign-off that needs three people on 11/25/2026 WED may not happen until January.
US long weekends inside a Chinese production run
Independence Day (07/04/2026 SAT, observed 07/03/2026 FRI) and Labor Day (09/07/2026 MON) cost days on the US side only. They rarely move a factory date, but they do move an approval date — which then moves the factory date.
Ten things worth knowing
Why the calendar behaves the way it does.
The official notice reads seven or eight days. The plant reads a workforce that has to travel home across a continent and back. Plan the longer number and you are never wrong.
The founding of the People’s Republic on 10/01/1949. It became a full week in 1999, explicitly to create a domestic travel and consumption holiday — which is precisely why it empties factories.
The Islamic calendar is lunar and shorter than the Gregorian year, so Eid moves earlier every year. A date that cleared Eid last season may sit inside it this season.
Tết and Chinese New Year are the same lunar new year. Splitting a program across the two countries hedges tariffs, not the calendar.
It tracks the harvest moon, so it drifts through late September and early October. In some years it lands beside Golden Week and the two read as one closure.
It commemorates the poet Qu Yuan, who drowned himself in protest. Villagers raced boats to find him and threw rice into the water — the origin of both the races and the dumplings.
Long breaks are often paid for with adjacent working Saturdays or Sundays. A factory can be open on a weekend you assumed was closed — and closed on a weekday you assumed was open.
Rates climb ahead of Chinese New Year and again ahead of Golden Week, then blank sailings stretch transit after each one. The calendar sets the freight market as much as demand does.
Ferragosto is one day on paper. In practice Italian specialist workshops shut for weeks around it, so European tooling and sampling belong in July.
Domestic plants lose long weekends rather than fortnights, which is a real advantage on short-turnaround work — and the reason a domestic run can still rescue a date that a Chinese closure has taken away.
The questions we get asked most
Straight answers, in the order they usually come up.
Which two closures actually decide a year?
Chinese New Year and Golden Week. Everything else on the Chinese calendar is three to five days and can usually be absorbed inside a production window. Chinese New Year is a seven- or eight-day official holiday that behaves like three to four weeks, because workers travel across the country and return in waves. Golden Week is a full seven-day national closure with a capacity and freight squeeze on both sides. If your program has to cross either one, the honest planning assumption is that the calendar, not the factory, is your constraint.
How far ahead of Chinese New Year should a program be placed?
For goods needed in the first quarter, we want the purchase order and deposit in hand no later than early to mid-November of the preceding year. That leaves room for sampling, a 30–50 day production window and transit, all before the factory closes. Placed in December, the run either finishes in the days before the holiday — the highest-risk week of the year for quality — or waits until staff are back at full strength, which is well into March in practice.
- Early November — purchase order and deposit in hand for a first-quarter in-store date.
- Mid-November to early December — sampling and artwork approval closed out, before the factory starts winding down.
- Six weeks before the closure — production started, so the run finishes with days to spare rather than hours.
- December placement — the run either lands in the last week before the holiday, the highest-risk week of the year for quality, or waits until March in practice.
Why do factories close longer than the official notice?
The official notice is a public-holiday schedule for the country. A factory is a workforce, and most of that workforce lives in another province. Travel takes days at each end, many workers take unpaid leave around the official days, and some do not return to the same employer at all — so the plant reopens with a thinner line and trains new hands. That is why we plan on two to four weeks for Chinese New Year rather than the eight official days.
Are the 2027 dates confirmed?
No. Chinese public holiday dates are set annually by the PRC State Council and are normally published late in the preceding year, so the 2027 dates on this page are indicative. The lunar dates themselves are fixed — Chinese New Year falls on 02/06/2027 SAT — but the bridge days and make-up working weekends around them are not. We re-confirm the roster with the factory before any date is promised.
- Fixed already: the lunar dates. Chinese New Year falls on 02/06/2027 SAT and cannot move.
- Not fixed: how many official days sit around it, and which weekends are worked to pay for them.
- Published: normally late in the preceding year — the 2026 schedule landed on 11/04/2025 TUE.
- Our rule: we re-confirm the roster with the factory in writing before any 2027 date is promised.
Does dual-sourcing protect a date?
Only if the second country closes at a different time. Vietnam keeps the same lunar new year as China, so splitting a program across the two hedges tariffs and capacity but not the calendar. Taiwan and Korea keep shorter closures, yet their component supply often traces back to a Chinese plant that is shut for longer. Mexico is the genuine calendar hedge for Q1, and its own long break runs in December.
Do the holidays change the duty we pay?
No — duty follows the HS code, the declared value and the country of origin. What the calendar changes is when your entry lands, and that matters when a rate is moving. A container that clears customs before a rate change is treated differently from one that clears after it, so in a year of tariff volatility the ship date is a commercial decision, not only a logistics one.
What happens to freight rates around these closures?
They rise before and fall after, twice a year. The weeks before Chinese New Year and the weeks before Golden Week are the two annual peaks, because every exporter is trying to sail before the plants shut. Space gets scarce first, then price follows, and blank sailings after the holiday stretch transit times further. Booking early is worth more than negotiating hard in those windows.
How do you count a lead time across a holiday?
We schedule backwards from your in-store date and place the closures on the plan as blocked days before quoting anything. A 30–50 day production window that crosses Golden Week is a 37–57 day window. The closure is added, not absorbed — a factory that promises to make up seven lost days inside the original window is telling you what you want to hear.
- Start from the in-store date, not the order date, and work backwards.
- Lay in transit first — 40–60 days by sea depending on FCL or LCL, 10–20 days by air, door to door.
- Then the 30–50 day production window, by product.
- Then add every closure day the run crosses. A 30–50 day window across Golden Week is a 37–57 day window.
- Then sampling and approvals. Whatever is left is your decision time — and it is usually the part that gets spent first.
Which weeks are the riskiest for quality?
The last week before Chinese New Year and the first two weeks after. Before the holiday, lines are rushing to clear every order and workers are already travelling in their heads. After it, a plant may be running with new hands on a familiar tool. If a run has to sit either side of the holiday, we push the inspection later rather than earlier and hold the shipment until the report is clean.
Is there a good time of year to start a new program?
March to June is the cleanest run on the Chinese calendar — Qingming and Labour Day are the only interruptions, and both are days rather than weeks. Starting a new development in that window means tooling, sampling and the first production run all happen before the Mid-Autumn and Golden Week block, which is why we push new tool development into spring whenever the retail date allows it.
- March to June is the cleanest run on the Chinese calendar — Qingming and Labour Day are the only interruptions, and both are days rather than weeks.
- July and August work for China, but European tooling and sampling should be finished before Ferragosto.
- September and October are the worst window to start something new: Mid-Autumn, Golden Week and the Q4 freight peak land together.
- November to January is for reruns off existing tooling, not for new development that has to clear the Spring Festival.
How do US holidays affect a China-made program?
They rarely move a factory date and they regularly move an approval date. Artwork sign-offs, purchase orders and wire releases all need people at desks, and the US loses days around Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and the last two weeks of December. From Thanksgiving onward the bottleneck is usually on this side of the ocean, not the other.
What if my date cannot clear a closure?
We say so at the brief, while the date or the quantity can still move. The three honest options are: reduce the quantity so the run fits before the closure; keep the quantity and buy air freight for part of the order to protect the in-store date; or move the launch. What we will not do is promise a date the calendar does not support and manage it later.
- Cut the quantity so the run finishes before the closure, and rerun afterwards off the same tooling.
- Split the freight — air a first tranche to protect the launch, sail the balance.
- Move the launch by two to three weeks, which is almost always cheaper than either of the above.
- What we will not do: promise a date the calendar does not support and manage it later.
How often is this page updated?
The Chinese roster is re-checked when the State Council publishes each annual notice, normally late in the preceding year, and the international closures are re-confirmed per factory at the quote. Lunar and Islamic dates move against the Gregorian calendar every year, so treat any date beyond the current notice as indicative until we confirm it in writing on your program.
The Manufacturing CalendarWhen the factories stop, and what it costs you.
Every closure that moves a production date — China first, then the rest of the sourcing world — with what each holiday actually is, how long a plant really loses, and what it means for your program.
Most programs do not miss a date because a factory was slow. They miss it because nobody counted the weeks the factory would be shut. This page is the reference we plan against: the dates, the day of the week each one falls on, what the holiday is, and how much time a program loses in practice rather than on paper.
The China manufacturing calendar
The closures every schedule is built around. Two of them decide the year.
Chinese public holiday dates are set annually by the PRC State Council and are normally published late in the preceding year, so 2027 is indicative until the notice lands. What does not change is the shape of the year: capacity and freight rates tighten hard before Chinese New Year and again ahead of the fourth-quarter retail season, and factories commonly extend closures by several days on either side of both.
Shorter and gentler than Spring Festival, because the workforce travels domestically and comes back. The practical window is 09/25/2026 FRI through 10/16/2026 FRI — roughly three weeks, and in 2026 it is worse than usual because Mid-Autumn closes the plant for three days immediately before it. The real damage here is not the factory, it is the freight: this is the wall in front of every holiday-season delivery.
In 2026 Mid-Autumn falls on 09/25 FRI and closes the plant for three days, so the run-up to Golden Week is already broken before it starts. Whatever must ship in Q4 needs to be on the water before this week, not during it — ocean rates peak here and rolled bookings are routine.
National Day. A full national stop, both years, with no production, QC or customs clearance. One working Saturday on 10/10/2026 SAT pays part of it back. Unlike Spring Festival the workforce mostly travels domestically and returns, which is why the recovery is shorter.
Staff come back largely intact, so lines restart in days rather than weeks. The constraint moves to freight: everything that was held for the holiday hits the port at once, and space out of Yantian and Shanghai is the tightest of the year.
The published holiday is the smallest part of it. A plant winds down for roughly a fortnight before the date and rebuilds its workforce for two to three weeks after it, so the realistic planning window is 01/23/2027 SAT through 03/05/2027 FRI — about six weeks in which you should not expect a normal production week. Treat the whole span as closed and you will never be wrong; treat the eight days as the closure and you will miss a date.
Factory workers start leaving for home before the official date to beat the travel crush — some lines drop to partial manning a full fortnight early. Sub-suppliers of components, printing and packaging close first, so a plant can be open and still unable to finish your order. Freight is at its annual peak and space is booked out.
The State Council holiday, indicative until the annual notice publishes late in 2026. Nothing runs: no production, no QC, no loading, no customs brokerage, no one answering email. The new year itself falls on 02/06/2027 SAT — the Year of the Fire Goat.
The gates reopen on paper. In practice staff return in waves over two to three weeks, and a share never return at all — they take work closer to home, so lines are rebuilt with new hands. Expect reduced output, longer cycle times, and first-run quality that needs watching.
Chinese New Year is Thanksgiving week, Christmas and the last flight out of a hub airport all landing at once. Everyone in the country is trying to move at the same time, everyone in the world is trying to ship before it, and the price of both reflects that. You do not negotiate your way through that week — you plan around it.
What each holiday actually is — what it commemorates, what a family does on the day, and how long the plant is dark for it. Six closures, and only two of them decide a production date.
春节 · the Spring Festival, the start of the lunar year. Families travel home for a reunion dinner on new year’s eve, settle debts, hand out red envelopes and set off fireworks to see the old year out. It is the one long holiday most of the workforce takes all year, and for the many who work far from where they grew up, the only week they reliably see their own children. Nine official days in 2026 — the longest on record.
国庆节 · the founding of the People’s Republic on 10/01/1949. Seven days of parades, flag ceremonies and the largest domestic travel week on earth — several hundred million trips inside one week. The second of the two full national stops, and the one that sits directly in front of the Q4 shipping deadline.
中秋节 · the harvest moon, on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month. Families gather to eat mooncakes and look at the fullest moon of the year; the round cake and the round moon both stand for reunion. Companies gift boxes of mooncakes to staff and customers — including, most years, to us. Three days.
清明节 · Tomb-Sweeping Day. Families visit ancestral graves to clear the weeds, lay flowers and food, and burn incense and paper offerings. It is remembrance rather than celebration, and it doubles as the first outing of spring. Three days, and the shortest interruption on the calendar.
端午节 · the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. It commemorates Qu Yuan, a poet and minister who drowned himself in 278 BC in protest at his state’s corruption; villagers raced boats out to save him and beat drums to scare the fish. Today: boat races and sticky-rice zongzi. Three days.
劳动节 · International Workers’ Day, marked in China since 1949 and extended into a five-day break by borrowing a weekend. A domestic travel holiday rather than a family one. Five days in 2026, paid for with a working Saturday on 05/09/2026 SAT — and the last clear stop before the summer.
Both years, month by month, with every closure marked. Filled days are the two closures that decide a year; ringed days are the short ones; the light band after Spring Festival is the fortnight when a plant is officially open and not yet at full capacity.
China pays for its long breaks with working weekends. Six weekend days in the 2026 notice are official working days, so a plant can be running on a Saturday you wrote off and shut on a Monday you counted.
Golden Week only became a week in 1999. The State Council extended National Day deliberately, to create a domestic travel and consumption holiday — which is exactly why it empties a factory rather than merely closing an office.
We schedule backwards from your in-store date and put the closures on the plan as blocked days before quoting a ready date, so a holiday is a known block rather than a surprise. If a run cannot clear Chinese New Year, the honest answer is to move the date or the quantity — not to promise the calendar will behave.
Manufacturing calendars around the world
China is not the only calendar that moves. Every sourcing country has weeks it does not work.
Dual-sourcing only protects a date if the second country closes at a different time — and often it does not. Vietnam keeps the same lunar new year as China, and factories in Taiwan and Korea can be open while the Chinese plant making their components is shut. Lunar and Islamic holidays move against the Gregorian calendar every year, so a ship date that cleared the holiday last season will not necessarily clear it this one. Lengths below are what we plan around in practice, which is usually longer than the official notice.
Golden Week · 10/01/2026 THU – 10/07/2026 WED — National Day, the second week the country travels at once.
Mid-Autumn · 09/25/2026 FRI — the harvest moon, a short family closure.
National Day · 09/02/2026 WED — independence, declared 1945. A short closure.
Reunification + Labour · 04/30/2026 THU – 05/01/2026 FRI.
Holi · 03/03/2026 TUE — the spring festival of colour, usually a single day.
Independence Day · 08/15/2026 SAT.
Eid al-Adha · 05/27/2026 WED, then 05/16/2027 SUN, approx. — the feast of sacrifice, at the close of the Hajj.
Kurban Bayramı · 05/27/2026 WED, approx. — Eid al-Adha.
Republic Day · 10/29/2026 THU. August slowdown — not a holiday, a habit.
Chuseok · 09/24/2026 THU – 09/26/2026 SAT — the Korean harvest festival, families returning to ancestral homes. Korean Thanksgiving.
Liberation Day · 08/15/2026 SAT (Korea).
Guadalupe-Reyes · 12/12/2026 SAT – 01/06/2027 WED — the long December run from the Virgin of Guadalupe to Three Kings’ Day.
Independence · 09/16/2026 WED.
Christmas · 12/25/2026 FRI — through the new year across most of the region.
Easter · 04/05/2026 SUN.
Labor Day · 09/07/2026 MON — the unofficial end of summer, and the last clean week before Q4 decorating work floods domestic shops.
Thanksgiving · 11/26/2026 THU — the harvest holiday, and the week the country travels.
Christmas to New Year · 12/25/2026 FRI onward — reduced shifts more than full closure.
Before a date is promised we check the closure calendar of the country the order is actually running in, not the country the brand thinks of as “overseas.” If a program cannot clear a closure, we say so at the brief — while the date or the quantity can still move.
Where the two calendars collide
Four windows in the year when a US brand and a Chinese factory are working against each other.
A US holiday rarely moves a factory date. It moves an approval date — and an approval date moves the factory date. These are the four windows where the American and Chinese calendars pull in opposite directions, and where most missed launches are actually decided.
Chinese New Year against a US retail reset
US buyers set spring floor dates in January, exactly when Chinese lines are winding down for the Spring Festival. A brief approved in late January is competing with a factory trying to close its books before staff leave. Anything wanted in-store for spring should have been quoted in November.
Mid-Autumn plus Golden Week against US holiday floor dates
In 2026 Mid-Autumn (09/25/2026 FRI) and Golden Week (10/01/2026 THU – 10/07/2026 WED) sit ten days apart, so China effectively loses a fortnight at the precise moment US programs need goods on the water for November and December. Bookings made after Golden Week are fighting every other brand on earth for the same containers.
US shutdown against a Chinese factory still running
The pattern reverses. Chinese plants work through late December, but US offices, freight brokers and customs brokers thin out from Thanksgiving (11/26/2026 THU) onward. Approvals, not production, become the bottleneck — an artwork sign-off that needs three people on 11/25/2026 WED may not happen until January.
US long weekends inside a Chinese production run
Independence Day (07/04/2026 SAT, observed 07/03/2026 FRI) and Labor Day (09/07/2026 MON) cost days on the US side only. They rarely move a factory date, but they do move an approval date — which then moves the factory date.
Ten things worth knowing
Why the calendar behaves the way it does.
The official notice reads seven or eight days. The plant reads a workforce that has to travel home across a continent and back. Plan the longer number and you are never wrong.
The founding of the People’s Republic on 10/01/1949. It became a full week in 1999, explicitly to create a domestic travel and consumption holiday — which is precisely why it empties factories.
The Islamic calendar is lunar and shorter than the Gregorian year, so Eid moves earlier every year. A date that cleared Eid last season may sit inside it this season.
Tết and Chinese New Year are the same lunar new year. Splitting a program across the two countries hedges tariffs, not the calendar.
It tracks the harvest moon, so it drifts through late September and early October. In some years it lands beside Golden Week and the two read as one closure.
It commemorates the poet Qu Yuan, who drowned himself in protest. Villagers raced boats to find him and threw rice into the water — the origin of both the races and the dumplings.
Long breaks are often paid for with adjacent working Saturdays or Sundays. A factory can be open on a weekend you assumed was closed — and closed on a weekday you assumed was open.
Rates climb ahead of Chinese New Year and again ahead of Golden Week, then blank sailings stretch transit after each one. The calendar sets the freight market as much as demand does.
Ferragosto is one day on paper. In practice Italian specialist workshops shut for weeks around it, so European tooling and sampling belong in July.
Domestic plants lose long weekends rather than fortnights, which is a real advantage on short-turnaround work — and the reason a domestic run can still rescue a date that a Chinese closure has taken away.
The questions we get asked most
Straight answers, in the order they usually come up.
Which two closures actually decide a year?
Chinese New Year and Golden Week. Everything else on the Chinese calendar is three to five days and can usually be absorbed inside a production window. Chinese New Year is a seven- or eight-day official holiday that behaves like three to four weeks, because workers travel across the country and return in waves. Golden Week is a full seven-day national closure with a capacity and freight squeeze on both sides. If your program has to cross either one, the honest planning assumption is that the calendar, not the factory, is your constraint.
How far ahead of Chinese New Year should a program be placed?
For goods needed in the first quarter, we want the purchase order and deposit in hand no later than early to mid-November of the preceding year. That leaves room for sampling, a 30–50 day production window and transit, all before the factory closes. Placed in December, the run either finishes in the days before the holiday — the highest-risk week of the year for quality — or waits until staff are back at full strength, which is well into March in practice.
- Early November — purchase order and deposit in hand for a first-quarter in-store date.
- Mid-November to early December — sampling and artwork approval closed out, before the factory starts winding down.
- Six weeks before the closure — production started, so the run finishes with days to spare rather than hours.
- December placement — the run either lands in the last week before the holiday, the highest-risk week of the year for quality, or waits until March in practice.
Why do factories close longer than the official notice?
The official notice is a public-holiday schedule for the country. A factory is a workforce, and most of that workforce lives in another province. Travel takes days at each end, many workers take unpaid leave around the official days, and some do not return to the same employer at all — so the plant reopens with a thinner line and trains new hands. That is why we plan on two to four weeks for Chinese New Year rather than the eight official days.
Are the 2027 dates confirmed?
No. Chinese public holiday dates are set annually by the PRC State Council and are normally published late in the preceding year, so the 2027 dates on this page are indicative. The lunar dates themselves are fixed — Chinese New Year falls on 02/06/2027 SAT — but the bridge days and make-up working weekends around them are not. We re-confirm the roster with the factory before any date is promised.
- Fixed already: the lunar dates. Chinese New Year falls on 02/06/2027 SAT and cannot move.
- Not fixed: how many official days sit around it, and which weekends are worked to pay for them.
- Published: normally late in the preceding year — the 2026 schedule landed on 11/04/2025 TUE.
- Our rule: we re-confirm the roster with the factory in writing before any 2027 date is promised.
Does dual-sourcing protect a date?
Only if the second country closes at a different time. Vietnam keeps the same lunar new year as China, so splitting a program across the two hedges tariffs and capacity but not the calendar. Taiwan and Korea keep shorter closures, yet their component supply often traces back to a Chinese plant that is shut for longer. Mexico is the genuine calendar hedge for Q1, and its own long break runs in December.
Do the holidays change the duty we pay?
No — duty follows the HS code, the declared value and the country of origin. What the calendar changes is when your entry lands, and that matters when a rate is moving. A container that clears customs before a rate change is treated differently from one that clears after it, so in a year of tariff volatility the ship date is a commercial decision, not only a logistics one.
What happens to freight rates around these closures?
They rise before and fall after, twice a year. The weeks before Chinese New Year and the weeks before Golden Week are the two annual peaks, because every exporter is trying to sail before the plants shut. Space gets scarce first, then price follows, and blank sailings after the holiday stretch transit times further. Booking early is worth more than negotiating hard in those windows.
How do you count a lead time across a holiday?
We schedule backwards from your in-store date and place the closures on the plan as blocked days before quoting anything. A 30–50 day production window that crosses Golden Week is a 37–57 day window. The closure is added, not absorbed — a factory that promises to make up seven lost days inside the original window is telling you what you want to hear.
- Start from the in-store date, not the order date, and work backwards.
- Lay in transit first — 40–60 days by sea depending on FCL or LCL, 10–20 days by air, door to door.
- Then the 30–50 day production window, by product.
- Then add every closure day the run crosses. A 30–50 day window across Golden Week is a 37–57 day window.
- Then sampling and approvals. Whatever is left is your decision time — and it is usually the part that gets spent first.
Which weeks are the riskiest for quality?
The last week before Chinese New Year and the first two weeks after. Before the holiday, lines are rushing to clear every order and workers are already travelling in their heads. After it, a plant may be running with new hands on a familiar tool. If a run has to sit either side of the holiday, we push the inspection later rather than earlier and hold the shipment until the report is clean.
Is there a good time of year to start a new program?
March to June is the cleanest run on the Chinese calendar — Qingming and Labour Day are the only interruptions, and both are days rather than weeks. Starting a new development in that window means tooling, sampling and the first production run all happen before the Mid-Autumn and Golden Week block, which is why we push new tool development into spring whenever the retail date allows it.
- March to June is the cleanest run on the Chinese calendar — Qingming and Labour Day are the only interruptions, and both are days rather than weeks.
- July and August work for China, but European tooling and sampling should be finished before Ferragosto.
- September and October are the worst window to start something new: Mid-Autumn, Golden Week and the Q4 freight peak land together.
- November to January is for reruns off existing tooling, not for new development that has to clear the Spring Festival.
How do US holidays affect a China-made program?
They rarely move a factory date and they regularly move an approval date. Artwork sign-offs, purchase orders and wire releases all need people at desks, and the US loses days around Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and the last two weeks of December. From Thanksgiving onward the bottleneck is usually on this side of the ocean, not the other.
What if my date cannot clear a closure?
We say so at the brief, while the date or the quantity can still move. The three honest options are: reduce the quantity so the run fits before the closure; keep the quantity and buy air freight for part of the order to protect the in-store date; or move the launch. What we will not do is promise a date the calendar does not support and manage it later.
- Cut the quantity so the run finishes before the closure, and rerun afterwards off the same tooling.
- Split the freight — air a first tranche to protect the launch, sail the balance.
- Move the launch by two to three weeks, which is almost always cheaper than either of the above.
- What we will not do: promise a date the calendar does not support and manage it later.
How often is this page updated?
The Chinese roster is re-checked when the State Council publishes each annual notice, normally late in the preceding year, and the international closures are re-confirmed per factory at the quote. Lunar and Islamic dates move against the Gregorian calendar every year, so treat any date beyond the current notice as indicative until we confirm it in writing on your program.
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