Closure expectation
HighLunar New Year is modeled as a public holiday in South Korea; expect office, bank, school, and service-hour changes unless a local exception applies.
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Holiday guide
Global holiday guide rooted in South Korea's calendar, observed nationwide.
Next occurrence
February 6, 2027
Saturday · Asia/Seoul
Next occurrence
February 6, 2027
Saturday
Observed in
2 countries
Current holiday dataset
Primary context
South Korea
Public
Planning timezone
Asia/Seoul
UTC+09:00
Next: February 6, 2027 (Saturday)
Lunar New Year pages matter because the holiday is both culturally expansive and calendar-complex, with reunion travel, school breaks, red-envelope customs, and temple visits all tied to a movable Gregorian date. In the current dataset this holiday appears in 2 country calendars, with the strongest concentration in Asia (2).
Last updated recently. Dates draw from the curated holiday catalog (tracked window 2025-2027); cultural context comes from the source-cited curation library when an entry exists.
Local statutory mode, country coverage, date rule, timezone spread, and related planning context for Lunar New Year.
Primary calendar
South Korea · Public
Cultural family
East Asian lunar festival · East Asia
Observed scope
Nationwide observance
Coverage reach
2 countries in the current holiday dataset
Timezone context
Asia/Seoul (UTC+09:00)
Next date signal
February 6, 2027 · Saturday
Forward window
2025: January 28, 2025 · 2025: January 29, 2025 · 2025: January 30, 2025 · 2026: February 16, 2026
Related planning set
Chuseok · Buddha's Birthday · New Year's Day
Regional spread
Asia 2
Reference posture
3 source-cited dossier references plus catalog dates
The rows below are built from this holiday's actual route, country, local-name, date, rule, timezone, observed-country, and adjacent-calendar records. They make Lunar New Year in South Korea distinct from holidays with similar names or the same season.
Route identity
lunar-new-year · Lunar New Year · South Korea · KR
Local name and scope
설날 · Public · nationwide
Rule and family
East Asian lunar festival · East Asia · lunar / lunisolar
Country/date clusters
February 6, 2027 (2)
Observed type mix
Public: 2
Forward date window
2027: February 6, 2027 (Saturday) · 2027: February 8, 2027 (Monday) · 2027: February 9, 2027 (Tuesday)
Timezone anchor
Asia/Seoul · Asia/Seoul (UTC+09:00)
Calendar neighbors
previous: New Year's Day (36 days before) · next: Independence Movement Day (23 days after)
Source depth
3 curated source citations plus catalog dates
The practical risk is not just the date. Lunar New Year can affect closure expectations, bridge-day leave, country-specific substitutions, cross-border date drift, and timezone reminders differently in each jurisdiction.
Closure expectation
HighLunar New Year is modeled as a public holiday in South Korea; expect office, bank, school, and service-hour changes unless a local exception applies.
Date confidence
Catalog onlyLunar New Year uses tracked catalog rows for the visible forward window. lunar / lunisolar holidays stay inside the source window when extrapolation would be risky.
Bridge-day pressure
SaturdayLunar New Year next falls on February 6, 2027 (Saturday). Weekend-substitution risk is the main scheduling question; check whether local law grants a weekday substitute.
Cross-border drift
AlignedLunar New Year appears in 2 country calendars with 1 next-date cluster. Do not assume every country observes it on the South Korea date.
Timezone handling
Single zoneSouth Korea has a single primary timezone in this country record, so date-boundary risk is lower than in multi-zone countries.
Source posture
DossierLunar New Year has 3 curated source citations rendered on the page, plus catalog dates and country metadata.
This page keeps the date answer separate from statutory verification. The catalog supplies the tracked date rows; the checkpoints below show which authority, story profile, local specificity, and dossier layer should be reviewed when the holiday affects bookings, payroll, travel, or public-service hours.
Country authority checkpoint
Korean national-holiday calendar; Lunar-calendar holiday announcements
Story and rule checkpoint
lunar holiday profile: Lunar New Year pages matter because the holiday is both culturally expansive and calendar-complex, with reunion travel, school breaks, red-envelope customs, and temple visits all tied to a movable Gregorian date.
Local specificity checkpoint
Korea's Seollal version of Lunar New Year centers on family visits, sebae greetings, ancestral rites, and traditional foods such as tteokguk, making it distinct from the China Spring Festival page. For South Korea, highway congestion, KTX availability, family travel out of Seoul, and multi-day office closures are the practical details that make the date more than a generic lunar marker.
Dossier checkpoint
The bare 'lunar-new-year' slug is curated for South Korea (and Vietnam where applicable) and is deliberately distinct from 'chinese-new-year-spring-festival' (mainland China's 7-day Chunjie block) and 'chinese-new-year' (the 1-2 day Singapore/Malaysia/Philippines observance) — all three slugs reference the same astronomical event but encode different statutory frames. Within the Korean calendar, Seollal pairs with Chuseok (15th day of the 8th lunar month, the autumn harvest) as the two 3-day ancestral-rite blocks that bracket the year. Source citations are rendered in the holiday-specific dossier.
Reference stack
This block separates the local South Korea holiday answer from two common sources of programmatic-calendar confusion: countries that use the same holiday name on different dates, and future rows that are projected from a rule rather than directly tracked.
Cross-border date spread
Lunar New Year lands on the same next observed date across all 2 listed country calendars in this dataset.
Projection reliability
Lunar New Year stays inside the tracked catalog window for forward dates because its lunar / lunisolar rule is not safely extrapolated here. Source posture: 3 curated source citations attached.
Observed next-date clusters
February 6, 2027
2 countries · Hong Kong, South Korea
Observed type mix across countries
Name in South Korea
설날
The local catalog name for South Korea is 설날; the English display name is Lunar New Year.
Country calendar role
Lunar New Year is recorded in South Korea as a public holiday with nationwide scope.
Other local labels in this holiday family
Reference fields include Lunar New Year's country, date behavior, timezone context, related holidays, and observed-country coverage.
The festival comes from lunisolar calendar traditions in which the new moon opens the first month. In China, Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, and diaspora communities, that timing anchors reunion dinners, ancestor rites, household cleaning, debt-settling customs, lantern displays, and one of the world's largest recurring travel periods.
Korea's Seollal version of Lunar New Year centers on family visits, sebae greetings, ancestral rites, and traditional foods such as tteokguk, making it distinct from the China Spring Festival page.
Its planning footprint is broader than a single public holiday: offices may close for several days, transport systems peak before and after the official date, and cross-border teams often need to account for different local names and substitution rules.
Lunar New Year is marked as a nationwide observance in the current South Korea holiday data.
For South Korea, highway congestion, KTX availability, family travel out of Seoul, and multi-day office closures are the practical details that make the date more than a generic lunar marker.
Lunar New Year follows a lunar or lunisolar calendar tradition, so the Gregorian date changes from year to year. In the tracked data window, the dates land on 2025: January 28, 2025: January 29, 2025: January 30, 2026: February 16, 2026: February 17, 2026: February 18, 2027: February 6, 2027: February 8, 2027: February 9.
Because Lunar New Year follows a lunar or lunisolar calendar, the Gregorian date moves significantly each year and statutory recognition often spans several days, so reading the official block is more useful than the headline date.
The current static build keeps the tracked 2025-2027 date window online for curated holiday detail pages.
| Year | Date | Day |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | January 28, 2025 | Tuesday |
| 2025 | January 29, 2025 | Wednesday |
| 2025 | January 30, 2025 | Thursday |
| 2026 | February 16, 2026 | Monday |
| 2026 | February 17, 2026 | Tuesday |
| 2026 | February 18, 2026 | Wednesday |
| 2027 | February 6, 2027 | Saturday |
| 2027 | February 8, 2027 | Monday |
| 2027 | February 9, 2027 | Tuesday |
Rows below come straight from the tracked catalog window (2025-2027). The weekday distribution controls long-weekend math each year.
| Year | Date | Weekday | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2027 | February 6, 2027 | Saturday | Catalog |
| 2027 | February 8, 2027 | Monday | Catalog |
| 2027 | February 9, 2027 | Tuesday | Catalog |
Seasonal placement
Lunar New Year next lands in the winter / year-boundary planning band for South Korea. That matters for school terms, travel season, and whether the holiday sits near year-end, spring religious calendars, summer travel, or autumn civic cycles.
Weekday distribution in this window
Lunar New Year sits inside the East Asian lunisolar tradition, which means its Gregorian date moves and its meaning is read through ancestor remembrance, family reunion travel, and seasonal food customs rather than fixed-date civic ceremony.
Searches for Lunar New Year usually want the moving Gregorian date, the official statutory holiday block in South Korea, and travel-window awareness because reunion travel reshapes transport for several days.
Cultural family
East Asian lunar festival
Origin region: East Asia
Statutory mode
Lunar New Year is listed as a public holiday in South Korea (nationwide), which usually means government offices, banks, and most schools close.
Differentiates from neighbors
The bare 'lunar-new-year' slug is curated for South Korea (and Vietnam where applicable) and is deliberately distinct from 'chinese-new-year-spring-festival' (mainland China's 7-day Chunjie block) and 'chinese-new-year' (the 1-2 day Singapore/Malaysia/Philippines observance) — all three slugs reference the same astronomical event but encode different statutory frames. Within the Korean calendar, Seollal pairs with Chuseok (15th day of the 8th lunar month, the autumn harvest) as the two 3-day ancestral-rite blocks that bracket the year.
Religious / civic / cultural context
Seollal is the older of Korea's two great family holidays (with Chuseok) and traces to Silla-era ancestral observances syncretized with Confucian rites of filial piety formalized in the Joseon dynasty. Charye preserves the Confucian liturgical structure of jesa (ancestral sacrifice) in domestic miniature; sebae and sebaetdon enact the Confucian hierarchy of elder-junior relations. After a Japanese-colonial-era suppression and a post-war push toward the Gregorian New Year, Seollal was restored as a three-day national holiday in 1989 under President Roh Tae-woo.
Date rule
Falls on the first day of the first month of the East Asian lunisolar calendar, which corresponds to the second new moon after the winter solstice — typically between 21 January and 20 February on the Gregorian calendar. In South Korea the holiday under the Regulations on Public Holidays of Government Offices is a three-day block: Lunar New Year's Eve, Lunar New Year's Day, and the following day, with substitute-holiday rules if any portion overlaps a Sunday or other public holiday.
Planning impact
The three-day block plus weekend bookends typically yields a 5-7 day national shutdown, the heaviest of the Korean calendar alongside Chuseok. Expect KRX, KOSDAQ, BOK settlement, and Korean export logistics (Busan/Incheon) to halt; cross-border North Asia projects should freeze the window. Domestic travel surges 10-14 days out: KTX rail seats sell out via the Korail booking lottery, and Seoul empties as 60%+ of the population returns to ancestral hometowns. Vietnamese Tết overlaps the same lunisolar window — coordinated ASEAN/North-Asia planning calendars often align both shutdowns.
Observance mode by jurisdiction
Country-specific behavior
Only countries whose pattern departs from the headline observance rule are listed.
South Korea
Seollal (설날); 3-day statutory block under Presidential Decree on Public Holidays. Substitute-holiday Act of 2013 (extended 2021) provides a make-up weekday if the block overlaps Sunday or another holiday.
Vietnam
Tết Nguyên Đán; 5 statutory days under the Labour Code (Lunar New Year's Eve through the 3rd day of Tết). 2026 yields a 9-day natural block (14-22 Feb) with no compensatory days needed.
Mongolia
Tsagaan Sar uses the same lunisolar reckoning but with a Mongolian-specific intercalation that occasionally yields a date one lunar month later than Korea/Vietnam.
Sources
As a East Asian lunar festival sitting in the South Korea calendar, Lunar New Year matters for planning because office, bank, and school closures stack on the same day. The next tracked occurrence is February 6, 2027 (Saturday), which controls long-weekend math for that year.
Lunar New Year also appears in other country calendars such as Hong Kong and South Korea. Recorded next dates include Hong Kong on February 6, 2027 and South Korea on February 6, 2027 — slight differences across borders are common because each country can apply weekend-substitution or regional-only rules to the same nominal holiday.
South Korea plans this holiday primarily around Asia/Seoul. Because Lunar New Year follows a lunar or lunisolar calendar, the Gregorian date moves significantly each year and statutory recognition often spans several days, so reading the official block is more useful than the headline date. Teams often line Lunar New Year up with Chuseok, Buddha's Birthday, and New Year's Day when blocking off the broader holiday window.
Holiday planning depth
The closest observed holidays before and after Lunar New Year in the South Koreacalendar show the local scheduling neighborhood for 2027.
Previous holiday
New Year's Day
January 1, 2027 · Public
36 days before Lunar New Year; local label: 새해.
Next holiday
Independence Movement Day
March 1, 2027 · Public
23 days after Lunar New Year; local label: 3·1절.
These are the closest holidays around Lunar New Year in the South Koreacalendar for 2027. They help separate this guide from holidays in the same season or religious/civic family.
Independence Movement Day
March 1, 2027 · Public
23 days after Lunar New Year. Local label: 3·1절.
New Year's Day
January 1, 2027 · Public
36 days before Lunar New Year. Local label: 새해.
Children's Day
May 5, 2027 · Public
88 days after Lunar New Year. Local label: 어린이날.
Buddha's Birthday
May 13, 2027 · Public
96 days after Lunar New Year. Local label: 부처님 오신 날.
Memorial Day
June 6, 2027 · Public
120 days after Lunar New Year. Local label: 현충일.
Liberation Day
August 15, 2027 · Public
190 days after Lunar New Year. Local label: 광복절.
Lunar New Year appears in 2 country calendars in the current dataset.
Asia
2 countries
Lunar New Year reads differently across the 2 listed jurisdictions: a East Asian lunar festival can carry one statutory weight in South Korea and another in neighboring countries that copied the date but kept different observance rules.
| Country | Next date | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Hong Kong | February 6, 2027 | Public |
| South Korea | February 6, 2027 | Public |
Related links are selected from the same country calendar first, with family matches such as Easter-cycle or lunisolar festivals preferred before nearby-date filler.
Chuseok
September 24, 2026 · Public
Same lunisolar planning family
Open curated guide
Buddha's Birthday
May 24, 2026 · Public
Same lunisolar planning family
Open curated guide
New Year's Day
January 1, 2026 · Public
Nearby in the country calendar
See 2026 calendar
Independence Movement Day
March 1, 2026 · Public
Nearby in the country calendar
See 2026 calendar
Children's Day
May 5, 2026 · Public
Nearby in the country calendar
See 2026 calendar
Yes — Lunar New Year is listed as a public holiday in South Korea on a nationwide basis.
In 2027, Lunar New Year in South Korea falls on February 6, 2027 (Saturday). Subsequent dates: 2027 February 8, 2027, 2027 February 9, 2027.
Lunar New Year follows a lunar or lunisolar calendar tradition, so the Gregorian date changes from year to year. In the tracked data window, the dates land on 2025: January 28, 2025: January 29, 2025: January 30, 2026: February 16, 2026: February 17, 2026: February 18, 2027: February 6, 2027: February 8, 2027: February 9. Because Lunar New Year follows a lunar or lunisolar calendar, the Gregorian date moves significantly each year and statutory recognition often spans several days, so reading the official block is more useful than the headline date.
Lunar New Year is listed as a public holiday in South Korea (nationwide), which usually means government offices, banks, and most schools close. It reads as a East Asian lunar festival with origins tied to East Asia.
The local catalog name for South Korea is 설날; the English display name is Lunar New Year.
Lunar New Year appears in 2 country calendars in the current dataset, including Hong Kong, South Korea.
South Korea uses Asia/Seoul (UTC+09:00) for local planning.
Seollal is the older of Korea's two great family holidays (with Chuseok) and traces to Silla-era ancestral observances syncretized with Confucian rites of filial piety formalized in the Joseon dynasty. Charye preserves the Confucian liturgical structure of jesa (ancestral sacrifice) in domestic miniature; sebae and sebaetdon enact the Confucian hierarchy of elder-junior relations. After a Japanese-colonial-era suppression and a post-war push toward the Gregorian New Year, Seollal was restored as a three-day national holiday in 1989 under President Roh Tae-woo. The three-day block plus weekend bookends typically yields a 5-7 day national shutdown, the heaviest of the Korean calendar alongside Chuseok. Expect KRX, KOSDAQ, BOK settlement, and Korean export logistics (Busan/Incheon) to halt; cross-border North Asia projects should freeze the window. Domestic travel surges 10-14 days out: KTX rail seats sell out via the Korail booking lottery, and Seoul empties as 60%+ of the population returns to ancestral hometowns. Vietnamese Tết overlaps the same lunisolar window — coordinated ASEAN/North-Asia planning calendars often align both shutdowns.
The bare 'lunar-new-year' slug is curated for South Korea (and Vietnam where applicable) and is deliberately distinct from 'chinese-new-year-spring-festival' (mainland China's 7-day Chunjie block) and 'chinese-new-year' (the 1-2 day Singapore/Malaysia/Philippines observance) — all three slugs reference the same astronomical event but encode different statutory frames. Within the Korean calendar, Seollal pairs with Chuseok (15th day of the 8th lunar month, the autumn harvest) as the two 3-day ancestral-rite blocks that bracket the year.
Lunar New Year is often compared with Chuseok, Buddha's Birthday, New Year's Day on the South Korea calendar.