Spring Festival 2026: Year of the Horse and Chinese New Year Traditions

What this video shows

This short explainer covers the 2026 Spring Festival, also called Chinese New Year, and outlines the customs and logistics attached to it. It is not a day-in-the-life portrait of one person; instead it walks through seven numbered facts about the holiday. The video explains the lunar calendar that sets the date, the zodiac animal for the year, and the travel period that precedes the holiday. It then moves through the reunion dinner, red envelopes, public celebrations, cleaning customs, and the festival's reach outside China.

At a glance

What stands out

The 2026 celebration starts on February 17 and runs for 15 days, closing with the Lantern Festival. 2026 is the year of the horse, an animal the video links to energy, intelligence, courage and independence. The scale of movement is the striking part: hundreds of millions of people travel from the cities where they work back to their hometowns before the holiday, a period known as chunyun and described as the world's largest annual human migration. Food and money carry meaning — dumplings, fish and glutinous rice cakes appear at the New Year's Eve table, and red envelopes of cash go to children and younger relatives, now often sent digitally by smartphone. Cleaning happens before the new year to clear out old bad luck, but sweeping is deliberately avoided on New Year's Day itself.