China Tip: Plan Travel to Avoid China's Public & School Holidays
- Rick
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 16 minutes ago
China's population is around 1.4 billion people as of late 2025, making it the second most populous country in the world with about 17% of the world's total. When public holidays take place in China, its massive population creates mass internal migration for tourism and family visits. While contributing to huge economic boosts through consumer spending, it severely overwhelmed infrastructure due to massive crowds, fully booked transport (trains, flights, etc), severe traffic jams, skyrocketing prices, and packed attractions. As a result, China's public holidays are not really good time for foreigners (and locals) to be travelling around the country.
When making plans to travel to China, including Hong Kong and Macau, it is best to avoid mainland China's holiday seasons, including school holidays. Although Hong Kong and Macau have their own sets of public holidays and school holidays, they share many traditional Chinese festivals with mainland China, and also China's National Day, leading to significant overlaps.
China's Statutory Holidays
China has 7 public holidays per year. It used to have 11 days of statutory holidays, but starting in 2025, it is increased to 13 days annually, adding Lunar New Year's Eve and 2nd of May (a day after Labour Day) to the official list.
China's public holidays comprises of two long holidays, known as "Golden Weeks", and 5 shorter public holidays or festive periods. Three of these holidays fall on fixed dates — New Year Day (1st January), Labour Day (1st May) and National Day (1st October) — whereas the others follow the Lunar Calendar and fall on different dates every year.
The new statutory holidays starting 2025 are:
New Year's Day (1 day)
Chinese Lunar New Year's Eve & Lunar New Year (4 days)
Tomb-Sweeping Festival (1 day)
Labour Day (2 days)
Dragon Boat Festival (1 day)
Mid-Autumn Festival (1 day)
National Day (3 days)
However, the public holidays may be adjusted by the Chinese government annually by swapping weekends to create continuous vacation periods. As a result, the total number of day-offs for the 13-day public holidays can add up to around 30 days annually — e.g. 28 days in 2025 and 33 days in 2026.
China's Golden Weeks, each lasting at least 7 consecutive days, are major travel periods centred around the Spring Festival / Chinese Lunar New Year (in January / February) and its National Day (in October) creating week-long breaks for travels, family reunions, and commerce. Officially, the Spring Festival takes up 4 statutory holidays (starting from Lunar New Year's Eve) and National Day takes up 3 days, but the total number of day-offs are at least 14 days in total including weekends that fall within the holiday-periods.
The next significant break is Labour Day, which usually lasts 5 days. However, only 1st and 2nd of May are statutory holidays while the rest are adjusted to form a longer break. The remaining holidays — New Year's Day, Tomb-Sweeping Festival, Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival — are 1 statutory holiday each but may have 1 or 3 day-offs.
All the public holidays with at least 3 day-offs are sufficient for locals to make short travels within the country, especially after throwing in additional few days of their annual leaves.
Weekend Adjustments
Weekend adjustments for the public holidays work as follows:
If a 1-day holiday falls on a Wednesday, only that day will be a day-off.
If a 1-day holiday falls on a Monday or Friday, there will be no adjustments since it already has 3 day-offs.
If a 1-day public holiday falls on a Tuesday or Thursday, either Monday or Friday will be given as a day-off to bridge the holiday with the preceding / following weekend. An additional workday will be added on either a Saturday or Sunday as compensation.
If the holiday falls on a weekend, a day will be given on either the preceding Friday or the following Monday to form 3 day-offs.
If the National Day holiday (which starts on October 1 each year) coincides with the Mid-Autumn Festival (which changes each year based on the Lunar Calendar), the holidays will be combined for a total of 8 day-offs — total number of day-offs for the affected year may be shorter.
Check out these calendars to see how it works out:
Points to note:
Most of China's public holidays are in the first 6 months of the year with Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day occurring around October.
There are no 2 day-offs for any public holidays.
Weekend adjustments apply to mainland China only.
Do make sure to research on China's public holidays before planning the next trip.
School Holidays
China's school holidays are also pretty significant although the impact is not as great as the public holidays. A portion of locals, especially those with kids and prefer not to travel during the public holidays, may opt to travel during the school holidays. A faction of China's massive population is still a very significant number. And popular cities, like Beijing, Shanghai, Xi'an, Yunnan (Dali & Lijiang), Sichuan (Jiuzhaigou), will be overcrowded like any public holidays.
In China, the major school holidays are:
Summer Vacation: Spans about 2 months in July and August, sometimes starting right after the Dragon Boat Festival.
Winter Vacation: Spans about 1 month in January and February and includes the major Spring Festival.
China's public holidays are also school holidays.
Check China's school holidays here:
Starting in 2025 also, China implemented new, short spring and autumn school breaks for primary / secondary students, adding 3~5 days to existing holidays to boost tourism and reduce academic pressure. The exact dates vary by locality and may link to official public holidays like Labour Day and National Day.
As a reference, the following was implemented by about 27 cities in 2025:
Spring Break: A 2-day break around Labour Day in May, making the 5-day May holiday longer for families with primary / secondary students.
Autumn Break: A 3-day break in mid-November.
Related news on The Straits Times:
I was in Beijing, from 11~17 November 2025, without knowing about the new autumn break for schools in some cities, which was from 12~14 November and further extended to 16 Nov by the weekend, resulting in a 5-day break. My whole trip overlapped with the school break and it was very crowded, with ultra-long queues, at many attraction sites in Beijing (see photo above), a popular destination for many Chinese too, although not as bad as during the public holidays.
In short, it is best to avoid travelling in China during their public holidays and, if possible, their school holidays. The dates / periods of the public holidays, summer and winter vacations are easy to find on many websites that track China's holidays but the shorter school breaks, which vary by locality, may be harder to determine.
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