When is the best time to visit China?

The holidays to plan around

The State Council publishes the next year's public holidays each November. For 2026: New Year 1 to 3 January; Spring Festival 15 to 23 February; Qingming 4 to 6 April; Labour Day 1 to 5 May; Dragon Boat 19 to 21 June; Mid-Autumn 25 to 27 September; National Day 1 to 7 October. The 2027 list had not been published when this was written; Spring Festival 2027 falls on 6 February.

The scale is the point. The National Day week of 2026 saw 826 million domestic trips and the Spring Festival 596 million; even the five-day Labour Day holiday drew 325 million. Hotel prices rise by half or double, high-speed trains sell out within minutes of release, and the sights that limit daily visitors are gone for the whole week. The three-day holidays (Qingming, Dragon Boat, Mid-Autumn) are busy at headline sights but workable elsewhere. Shops and attractions stay open through all of them, except that smaller places close for the first days of the Spring Festival.

Season by region

• North (Beijing, Xi'an, Pingyao): dry, cold winters (Beijing averages about -3 °C in January), hot summers with a third of the year's rain in July and August. Best from mid-April to May and September to October; the Fragrant Hills turn red in late October.
• Yangtze and the east (Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Huangshan): the plum rains run from mid-June into July, then a humid 29 °C August with typhoons possible on the coast until September. Best in April to May and October to November; Huangshan is also striking in winter snow.
• South (Guangzhou, Guilin, Yangshuo, Fujian): mild winters around 14 °C and a long wet season from May, with Guangzhou taking over 300 mm a month in May and June. Best from October to December, and the Li River in April to June for green hills and full water.
• Southwest (Chengdu, Chongqing, Guizhou): cloudy most of the year (Chengdu sees the sun about a fifth of the time), warm wet summers, mild damp winters. Spring and autumn, with Jiuzhaigou at its best in the second half of October.
• Yunnan: dry and sunny from November to April, with Kunming between 9 °C and 20 °C year round; rain from June to September. Winter is the season here, when the Yuanyang terraces are flooded and the Luoping rapeseed flowers in late February.
• Tibet and Qinghai: May to October. July and August are the wettest months yet Lhasa still has more sunshine than anywhere else in China; winter is clear and cold, with fewer tours running.
• Northwest (Xinjiang, Gansu): June to September, when the grasslands are green and the desert passes are open; Urumqi averages -12 °C in January. Kanas turns gold in the last two weeks of September.
• Northeast (Harbin): the Ice and Snow World opens in the second half of December and runs into February; January averages -17 °C, so dress for it.

Seasonal highlights worth timing a trip for

• Late February to mid-March: rapeseed at Luoping, then from mid-March to early April at Wuyuan.
• Late March: cherry blossom at Wuhan University, which has limited entry by advance reservation in recent years.
• December to March: flooded terraces at Yuanyang; Sanya at its driest.
• Mid-September to mid-October: autumn colour across the northwest, then Jiuzhaigou and the Beijing hills into early November.
• Mid-December to late February: Harbin's ice. In the 2025–26 season the park opened on 17 December and closed on 21 February in a thaw.

A rule of thumb

• First trip (Beijing, Xi'an, Shanghai): late April to May, or September to mid-October skipping the first week.
• Yunnan, Guangxi, Hainan: November to March.
• Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, the grasslands: June to September.
• Sichuan: October for Jiuzhaigou, or April to May; the pandas are indoors in the heat of summer.
• Harbin: January.
• If a holiday week is unavoidable, book trains the day sales open, 15 days ahead, and the big sights the minute their tickets are released; see the guide to sights that need booking.

Official sources

The rules above change; these are the pages to check before you travel, and the ones this guide was checked against on 2026-10-25.

• State Council notice on 2026 public holidays the official dates, in Chinese; the 2027 notice follows in November 2026
• Xinhua: the 2026 holiday schedule 4 November 2025
• China Daily: National Day holiday 2026 travel figures 826 million trips, Ministry of Culture and Tourism data
• China Meteorological Administration climate normals and forecasts; the figures above are 1991 to 2020 normals
• Beijing tourism bureau: Fragrant Hills red leaves mid-October to early November
• Wuhan University: cherry blossom visits reservation rules change each spring

Related guides

• Book popular sights early
  Which sights in China need booking in advance, and how? Updated October 2026
• Trains and 12306
  How do I book train tickets in China with a foreign passport? Updated October 2026
• Visas and visa-free entry
  Can I visit China without a visa? Updated October 2026

Start planning

Pick the places you want to see on the illustrated map, add them to a trip, and the planner lays out the days and the trains between them.