Chinese Lunar Calendar
Convert any Gregorian date to its Chinese lunar equivalent — or convert a Chinese lunar date back to the Gregorian calendar. See the zodiac year, GanZhi, solar term, and traditional festivals.
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24 Solar Terms · 二十四节气
The solar year is divided into 24 segments, each marking a shift in seasons and agricultural rhythms. Click any term to learn about it.
Traditional Festivals
Major festivals follow the lunar calendar, so their Gregorian dates shift each year. Dates below are calculated for 2026.
Every date has multiple identities in the Chinese calendar. A single day carries a Gregorian label, a lunar month-and-day, a zodiac year with its animal and element, a two-character GanZhi name, a solar term marking its place in the agricultural year — and sometimes, a traditional festival. Together, these form a complete picture of where that day sits in Chinese cultural time.
Use the converter above to reveal any date's full identity. Dates are calculated, not interpreted — this tool reports what the calendar says, not fortune or prediction.
Learn
The Chinese Lunar Calendar (农历, nónglì) is a lunisolar calendar that tracks time by both the moon's phases and the sun's position. Each month begins at the new moon. To stay aligned with the solar year, a leap month is added approximately every three years — giving some years 13 months instead of 12. This is why Chinese New Year falls on a different Gregorian date each year.
The Gregorian calendar is purely solar — months are fixed at 28-31 days regardless of moon phases. The Chinese Lunar Calendar is lunisolar: each month tracks the moon (starting at new moon, full moon at the 15th), but leap months are added to keep the calendar aligned with seasons. Chinese months have either 29 or 30 days depending on the moon's actual cycle.
The 24 Solar Terms (二十四节气) divide the solar year into 24 segments of roughly 15 days each, based on the sun's position in the ecliptic. They were essential for agricultural planning — telling farmers when to plant, harvest, and prepare for weather changes. Today they remain culturally significant: LiChun marks the zodiac new year; QingMing is a major ancestral festival; DongZhi is celebrated with family gatherings. The system was inscribed on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2016.
Chinese New Year falls on the second new moon after the Winter Solstice (DongZhi). Since the lunar month begins at each new moon, and the solar year determines where this falls, the date shifts each year — always landing between January 21 and February 20 on the Gregorian calendar.
The Chinese calendar adds a leap month (闰月, rùnyuè) approximately every 2-3 years to reconcile the lunar and solar years. A leap month is a repeat of the preceding month — so you might have a "Leap 6th Month" following the regular 6th Month. If you were born in a leap month, your lunar birthday will only occur in some years (when that specific leap month appears). Years with 13 lunar months are called leap years (闰年, rùnnián).
GanZhi (干支) combines the 10 Heavenly Stems (天干) and 12 Earthly Branches (地支) into a 60-year cycle used to label years, months, days, and hours. Each year has a two-character GanZhi name — 2024 is 甲辰 (Jiǎ-Chén), 2025 is 乙巳 (Yǐ-Sì), 2026 is 丙午 (Bǐng-Wǔ). This system has been in continuous use for over 2,000 years and forms the basis of BaZi (Four Pillars) astrology.