🇹🇼How does Taiwan mark Valentine's Day?

西洋情人節

Local date

February 14, 2027

Taiwan's 14 February is not a holiday, and in law it does not even have a name. The Act on Commemorative Days and Holidays is otherwise generous with names: Article 3 enumerates twenty commemorative days, and Article 5 runs to twenty-eight clauses of festivals, among them Mother's Day (the second Sunday in May), Father's Day (8 August) and Grandparents' Day (the fourth Sunday in August) — three days about family relationships. Only the six commemorative days singled out in Article 4 and a short list in Article 6 actually carry a day off, so 'named but worked' is the normal condition in Taiwan. Valentine's Day is not even named. The one point where the date touches the state is household registration: because it is not a festival, whether you can register a marriage on it depends entirely on which weekday it falls. Taiwan's answer is weekend appointment registration — booked at least three working days before the registration date, with the effective date of the marriage expressly 'not limited to the working days set by the personnel administration' — although Taichung's offices have suspended weekend bookings during long holiday runs since February 2023. In 2026 the arrangement reaches its limit: the government working calendar approved by the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration puts the Lunar New Year break at Saturday 14 February through Sunday 22 February, nine days, and Valentine's Day is day one of it. What gives Taiwan that day off is not Valentine's Day; it is the Lunar New Year.