Is Lunar New Year's Eve a Public Holiday?

In mainland China and Taiwan the eve is not a separate one-day holiday — it is the opening day of the Spring Festival block, which is why the table above shows it wrapped in a longer range. Mainland China has named it explicitly since 2025, when the amended national holiday regulation (in force from 1 January 2025) defined the statutory Spring Festival holiday as four days: the eve plus the first three days of the new year. Taiwan likewise counts Lunar New Year’s Eve among its official days off. Vietnam lists it explicitly as Tết Eve. South Korea’s three-day Seollal opens on the eve by statute. Indonesia usually reaches it through a cuti bersama bridge day rather than the holiday itself.

One consequence of that design: where the eve depends on an annual arrangement — Taiwan, Vietnam and Indonesia — a year whose notice has not been published yet leaves the eve with nothing to show, and the row is marked as not announced rather than as a working day. Mainland China has not had that gap since 2025, when the eve became a statutory holiday; its November notice now only decides how far beyond the four statutory days the break extends. The most distant year on this page is still the one to re-check.

Hong Kong and Macau start counting from the first day of the new year, so the eve is a normal working day — in practice many offices close at lunchtime and the stock exchange runs a half session, but there is no statutory entitlement. Singapore and Malaysia are the same. In the Philippines the eve is not marked at all; only the new year itself is a special non-working day.

Because the eve is defined as the day before the lunar new year, it inherits any disagreement about when the lunar new year is. Korea files the new moon under a date using KST and China uses CST, so in 2027 Korean Seollal is 7 February while Chinese New Year is the 6th — which makes the Korean eve the 6th and everyone else’s the 5th. Each row in the table above is dated from that country’s own calendar, so a reader in Seoul sees the Korean eve rather than a date imported from Beijing.

A blank in the table is not always a "no", either. Taiwan, Vietnam and Indonesia set the length of the break by an annual government notice rather than by standing law, so in a year whose notice has not been issued yet the eve simply has no arrangement. Those rows are marked as not announced, not as working days. Mainland China is the exception: the eve itself has been statutory since 2025, and the annual notice only shapes the longer block built around it.