August 13, 2026

How Chinese New Year Affects Your Shipping Schedule

Dense cluster of traditional red Chinese lanterns, representing how Chinese New Year affects shipping schedules from China

Chinese New Year is not a single public holiday you can plan around with a few days' buffer. It is a nationwide shutdown that touches nearly every factory, port, and trucking company in China at once, and it catches importers off guard every single year, usually the ones ordering for the first time.

Why it disrupts shipping so much

Chinese New Year, also called Spring Festival, follows the lunar calendar, so the exact dates shift from year to year, typically falling somewhere between late January and mid-February. Factories close for the holiday itself, but the real disruption is much wider: millions of factory workers travel home to see family, and many simply do not return to the same job afterward, meaning factories often spend weeks rebuilding their workforce even after reopening.

The three phases of disruption

Rather than a single closure date, the disruption plays out in three overlapping phases.

The pre-holiday rush: in the weeks before the shutdown, factories race to finish outstanding orders, which means booking space with freight forwarders gets harder and production slots fill up earlier than usual.
The shutdown itself: most factories close for roughly one to two weeks around the holiday, though the exact length varies by factory and industry, and this is when almost nothing ships.
The post-holiday ramp-up: factories do not simply switch back on the day after the holiday ends. Workforce shortages and restarting production lines mean output often takes several weeks to return to normal.

Why this catches first-time importers off guard

An importer placing an order without accounting for the holiday can find their production quietly slips by weeks, not because anything went wrong, but because the entire supply chain around their supplier slowed down at the same time. This is separate from, and often layers on top of, common mistakes first-time importers make around timeline planning generally.

How far ahead you actually need to plan

There is no fixed number of days that applies to every product or supplier, since the exact impact depends on your factory's specific closure dates and how quickly they ramp back up. The safest approach is to ask your supplier directly, well in advance, for their planned closure and reopening dates for that year, and build your order and shipping timeline around their answer rather than a generic industry assumption.

What to do if you are ordering close to the holiday

Ask your supplier for their exact shutdown dates as early as possible, since these vary by factory and are not always the same as the official public holiday dates
Avoid skipping quality checks to save time, since a rushed pre-holiday production run is exactly when defects are more likely, and pre-shipment inspection matters most when everyone is racing a deadline
Build in extra buffer on transit time, since port and trucking capacity around the holiday period is also affected, not just factory output
Consider ordering earlier in the season for anything you need delivered in the weeks immediately following the holiday, since post-holiday capacity is exactly when things are most likely to slip

FAQ

Does the shipping delay only affect the factory, or the whole logistics chain?

The whole chain. Ports, trucking, and customs brokers in China also slow down around the holiday, since their staff are affected by the same nationwide travel and return-to-work patterns as factory workers.

Is ordering right before the holiday always a bad idea?

Not necessarily, but it requires more caution. If your supplier confirms they can complete and ship before their closure, it can still work, but the margin for error is much smaller than at other times of year.

How do I find out the exact dates for a given year?

Ask your supplier directly, since factory-specific closure dates can differ slightly from the general public holiday dates, and confirming with them directly is more reliable than assuming a fixed date range.

If you have an order that might land near a Chinese New Year period, tell us your timeline and we can help you plan around it rather than discover the delay after your production has already slipped.

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