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Dragon Boat Festival

Dragon Boat Festival

How the world celebrates

The fifth day of the fifth lunar month is a public holiday in both Taiwan and mainland China, while Japan moved the same 'fifth of the fifth' onto the Gregorian calendar and turned it into a statutory children's day.

Quick answers

How do places mark it?
PlaceWhen is it?How the date is set
TaiwanJune 9, 2027The 5th day of the 5th lunar month; the Gregorian calendar date varies each year
JapanMay 5, 2027—
China · 端午节June 9, 2027The 5th day of the 5th lunar month; the Gregorian calendar date varies each year
China · 罗店划龙船习俗（上海）June 9, 2027Estimated dateAround the 5th day of the 5th lunar month, according to local arrangements
China · 端午节（蒋村龙舟胜会）June 9, 2027Estimated dateOn the 5th day of the 5th lunar month, Jiangcun, Xihu District, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province
IndonesiaJune 9, 2027Estimated dateThe 5th day of the 5th lunar month (Go Gwe Ce Go)
BrazilNot observed hereNot on the official list
IndiaNot observed hereNot on the official list
United StatesNot observed hereNot on the official list

See the 2027 annual holiday calendar →

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      How the world celebrates

      • May 5, 2027Local date

        How does Japan mark Dragon Boat Festival?端午の節句／こどもの日

        Japan fixes 5 May as the national holiday Kodomo no Hi, on the Gregorian calendar, so it does not move with the lunar year. The statutory purpose recorded by the Cabinet Office is to respect a child's character, work for a child's happiness, and thank the mother — legally it is not aimed only at boys. The date landed on 5 May because an earlier proposal to merge the 3 March doll festival with the 5 May Tango no Sekku onto 3 May was dropped once 3 May became Constitution Day. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has held a carp-streamer raising ceremony on this day since before the war. The 1948 Act on National Holidays set the fifth of May as Children's Day, and the text speaks of respecting children's character, seeking their happiness — and thanking mothers. A day that began as the boys' seasonal festival was, on becoming a statutory holiday, rewritten to give thanks to mothers as well, and that turn can be read in the provision itself. The iris bath and the carp streamers stayed in custom and never entered the law.

        www8.cao.go.jp ↗mhlw.go.jp ↗

      • June 9, 2027Local date

        How does Taiwan mark Dragon Boat Festival?端午節

        In Taiwan the Dragon Boat Festival is a paid public holiday under the Act on Commemorative Days and Holidays, falling on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, so its Gregorian date moves each year. The common parts are wrapping and eating zongzi, dragon boat races, hanging mugwort and calamus, and wearing scented pouches; some people only stand an egg upright at noon. It is also one of the three major festivals, so the homecoming and the family meal often outweigh the ritual. How far a household takes it varies a great deal. Duanwu is also one of the three annual festivals in Taiwan, standing with Mid-Autumn and Lunar New Year as a point at which accounts are settled and gift boxes sent — a commercial meaning that has nothing to do with boats yet is another reason the day is remembered each year. Household practice adds standing an egg on its end and drawing noon water around midday; neither needs a river, so both continue in cities with no race at all.

        law.moj.gov.tw ↗hko.gov.hk ↗

      • June 9, 2027Local date

        How does China mark Dragon Boat Festival? · 端午节

        Mainland China lists Duanwu among the days off for all citizens in the national holiday regulation. It was published in the very first batch of national intangible cultural heritage in 2006 under the code X-3, and is now administered by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The listing names commemorating historical figures, dragon boat racing, eating zongzi, and a whole set of practices for warding off the 'five poisons': paper-cut charms, hanging mugwort and calamus, scented pouches, and herbal baths. In the register the festival is a plural set of customs, not a single image.

        gov.cn ↗ihchina.cn ↗

      • June 9, 2027Local dateEstimated date

        How does China mark Dragon Boat Festival? · 罗店划龙船习俗（上海）

        Within the same festival, the dragon boat custom of Luodian in Shanghai is listed as a national intangible heritage item in its own right. That tells you something: dragon boating is not one nationally uniform race but a set of local traditions with their own rules, hull shapes, and ceremonies, some of which are judged worth protecting separately. Looking only at the nationwide picture of 'how Duanwu is kept' misses this layer entirely.

        ihchina.cn ↗

      • June 9, 2027Local dateEstimated date

        How does China mark Dragon Boat Festival? · 端午节（蒋村龙舟胜会）

        A second dragon boat custom is listed separately under the same code X-3: the Jiangcun Dragon Boat Gathering in the Xihu district of Hangzhou, Zhejiang, published in the third batch in 2011. Residents organise it themselves on the day of Duanwu, and the story told is that the Qianlong Emperor, travelling south, found the racing at Jiangcun as lively as a market fair and bestowed the name 'Dragon Boat Gathering'. One to two hundred boats converge at Shentankou in the Xixi wetland, perform along a set route, and finish with a full turn in the centre; households wrap zongzi, hang mugwort and calamus, and eat the 'five yellows', with each village then dining together afterwards.

        ihchina.cn ↗

      • June 9, 2027Local dateEstimated date

        How does Indonesia mark Dragon Boat Festival?Peh Cun (Petjoen)

        Indonesia has dragon boats too, and not as a recent import: Peh Cun — written locally as Petjoen — is held on the Cisadane River in the city of Tangerang by the Cina Benteng, the Chinese community around the old Batavia fortress, on the same fifth day of the fifth lunar month. At the centre is a sacred boat unsealed only once a year: opened, bathed and blessed before any racing happens, alongside throwing rice dumplings into the river, standing eggs on end and releasing ducks. The Tangerang city government lists it among the city's intangible cultural heritage. Elsewhere on this page the comparison is one festival across countries; here it is one festival that travelled with people for three centuries.

        tangerangkota.go.id ↗smartcity.tangerangkota.go.id ↗

      • Not observed hereLocal date

        Does Brazil have Dragon Boat Festival?

        There is no Duanwu in Brazil. The nationwide holidays are the seven dates fixed by Law 662 of 1949 plus 12 October added by Law 6.802 of 1980; the remaining religious days are handed by Law 9.093 of 1993 to the municipalities, capped at four. That structure has no place for a lunar calendar, and even getting in at the local level would mean pushing something out of those four slots. Dragon boating here is a rowing discipline run by sports clubs, not a day on the calendar.

        www2.camara.leg.br ↗camara.leg.br ↗

      • Not observed hereLocal date

        Does India have Dragon Boat Festival?

        India has no Duanwu, but it has a boat regatta of its own: Vallam Kali in Kerala, of which the best known is the Nehru Trophy Boat Race on Punnamada Lake in Alappuzha, fixed on the second Saturday of August. The boats are chundan vallams — snake boats over a hundred feet long pulled by more than a hundred oarsmen; Nehru visited in 1952 and donated a silver trophy, which is where the name comes from. So this cell is not a missing regatta; it is the same thing running here on a different calendar and in a different boat.

        india.gov.in ↗alappuzha.nic.in ↗

      • Not observed hereLocal date

        Does United States have Dragon Boat Festival?

        There is no Duanwu in the United States, but there are dragon boat races — a good many. What happened here is that the boats arrived and the calendar did not: the races are run as summer sport and city festivals, with dates picked by organisers for a convenient weekend and no relation to the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. The eleven federal holidays are all fixed dates or nth Mondays, none of them following the moon, so the festival has no institutional peg to hang from.

        usa.gov ↗

      Sources and dates

      Dates follow local time zones, calendars, and official notices. Check the source when a date is estimated or locally variable.