Chinese New Year falls on Saturday, 6 February 2027 — the Year of the Goat. The official public holiday runs roughly 5–12 February, eight days. If you plan against those eight days, you will be short of stock in March. The real disruption is four to six weeks wide, and it starts before anyone in China stops working. This article is for companies importing from China in commercial volumes and lays out the calendar backwards from the holiday, so the decisions land in the right months.
Why eight days becomes six weeks
- Before. Migrant workers travel home, and many leave before the official date. Lines run short-staffed for two to three weeks, factories stop accepting new orders they cannot finish, and everything already booked competes for the same shrinking capacity.
- During. Factories, forwarders, customs brokers and trucking all stop. Ports keep operating but at reduced tempo, and empty containers stop circulating.
- After. Workers do not all return on day nine. A share takes an extra one to three weeks, and some never return — they take a job in another city. Lines restart at reduced capacity with new, untrained staff, and ramp back up unevenly across the following month.
That last part is the one that costs money quietly, and it leads directly to the quality problem.
Quality dips on both sides of the holiday
Two distinct risks, and they are not the same risk:
- Pre-holiday rush. A factory racing to clear orders before the break cuts corners: skipped in-line checks, hurried packing, batches finished by whoever is still on site. Anything shipped in the last week before the holiday deserves a proper pre-shipment inspection, not a relaxed one.
- Post-holiday restart. New workers on lines that ran fine in December produce a spike in workmanship defects for several weeks. First runs after the break need in-production inspection as if the factory were new to you.
The inspection types and their timing are in quality control when importing from China. If you are running a first batch of a new product across this window, the case for a pilot run gets stronger, not weaker.
The calendar, working backwards
- October 2026 — decide Q1 volumes and place orders for anything that must arrive before March. Note Golden Week, 1–7 October, is itself a full stop; see China's holidays and production shutdowns.
- Early November 2026 — production should be starting for first-quarter inventory. New products with tooling or sample rounds needed to start earlier still; the timings are in production lead times in China.
- Late November – December 2026 — book freight. Space tightens and rates climb into the pre-holiday rush; this is when a booking made late costs materially more, for reasons set out in what makes up a container rate.
- Mid-January 2027 — production must be finished, not "nearly finished". Inspection and packing need to be complete with room to correct defects.
- Late January 2027 — cargo at port and loaded. Trucking inside China becomes scarce and expensive in the final fortnight.
- 5–12 February 2027 — the official holiday. Nothing moves at the factory end.
- Mid-to-late February 2027 — nominal restart, real capacity well below normal.
- March 2027 — normal output resumes progressively. Orders placed in February typically ship in late March or April.
What this does to freight
Two waves, in opposite directions. Before the holiday: a demand surge as everyone ships at once, tight space, higher rates, and rolled bookings. After it: a slump in volumes, then a scramble as the backlog clears. Rates around this window move more than at any other point in the year — how to read that movement is in freight rate indices.
There is also a demurrage trap on the receiving end. A container that arrives while your own customs broker, hauliers or warehouse are running holiday staffing burns free time fast — see demurrage and detention.
Practical planning rules
- Do not accept a delivery date that lands in the last week before the holiday. It will slip into the holiday, and a slip of one day becomes a slip of five weeks.
- Add a buffer of three to four weeks to any promise that spans the break, and get the factory's own holiday dates in writing — they vary by province and by plant.
- Pay deposits early. Materials are not ordered until the deposit clears, and material suppliers close too.
- Split the order if you can. Ship what is ready before the holiday, rather than waiting to consolidate a full container in February.
- Confirm who is actually working. Ask which staff remain reachable during the break — most factories keep a skeleton contact, and knowing who beats emailing a dead inbox for two weeks.
- Re-verify quality after the restart, especially on the first two post-holiday batches.
- Do not start a new supplier relationship across the holiday. Samples, approvals and first production all need continuity you will not have.
The one thing that cannot be recovered
Capacity is finite and everyone wants it in the same five weeks. Unlike most supply chain problems, this one cannot be solved with money in January — the queue is already full, and paying more moves you up a line that is not moving. It is solved in October, by ordering earlier than feels necessary.
Chinese New Year is the only supply chain risk on the calendar that is announced years in advance, affects every importer identically, and still catches most of them. The date is not the problem. The five weeks around it are, and they are only manageable from a distance.
Planning your Q1 around the holiday
We build the pre-holiday schedule with the factory in writing, front-load inspections before the rush, book freight ahead of the crunch rather than into it, and re-inspect the first post-holiday runs. Seven years and 3,500+ deliveries of doing exactly this — real projects are in our case studies.
Start with product sourcing or hand the shipping leg to our logistics service.
