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Mid-Autumn and Moon Viewing

Mid-Autumn and Moon Viewing

How the world celebrates

Around the same full moon, four different observances: Taiwan and mainland China take the day off, eat mooncakes, and gather as a family; the Korean-ethnic community of Yanbian in China keeps it as Chuseok, where tomb-sweeping comes first; and Japan does not close at all, treating it as an astronomical and seasonal night — where the national observatory is explicit that the 'harvest moon' is often not that night's full moon.

Quick answers

How do places mark it?
PlaceWhen is it?How the date is set
United StatesNot observed hereNot on the official list
Japan · 十三夜（後の月）October 23, 2026Estimated dateThe night of the 13th day of the 9th month in the lunar calendar. A moon-viewing paired with the Mid-Autumn Moon (15th day of the 8th month in the lunar calendar)
TaiwanSeptember 15, 2027The 15th day of the eighth month in the lunar calendar; the Gregorian date differs each year
China · 中秋节September 15, 2027The 15th day of the eighth month in the lunar calendar; the Gregorian date differs each year
China · 中秋节（秋夕）· 延边朝鲜族September 15, 2027Estimated dateAround the 15th day of the eighth month in the lunar calendar; the festival period can last several days
Japan · 中秋の名月（十五夜）September 15, 2027Estimated dateThe night corresponding to the 15th day of the eighth month in the lunar calendar. The date often differs from the actual full moon
BrazilNot observed hereNot on the official list
IndonesiaNot observed hereNot on the official list
IndiaNot observed hereNot on the official list

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      How the world celebrates

      • October 23, 2026Local dateEstimated date

        How does Japan mark Mid-Autumn and Moon Viewing? · 十三夜（後の月）

        Moon viewing in Japan does not happen only once: after the fifteenth night of mid-autumn comes Jusanya, the thirteenth night of the ninth lunar month, also called the later moon, forming a pair with the first. The National Astronomical Observatory's calendar wiki treats it in the same set of entries as the harvest moon. Traditionally, seeing only one of the two was called katami-zuki, a 'half viewing', and regarded as incomplete — so in Japan moon viewing is something that only counts when done twice.

        eco.mtk.nao.ac.jp ↗

      • September 15, 2027Local date

        How does Taiwan mark Mid-Autumn and Moon Viewing?中秋節

        In Taiwan Mid-Autumn is a paid public holiday under the Act on Commemorative Days and Holidays, falling on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, so the Gregorian date moves each year. Alongside Lunar New Year and Duanwu it is one of the three major festivals, and the point is that the family is together: moon viewing, mooncakes and pomelo, and only then each household's own habits. Because it is a rare long weekend, travelling home and meeting friends often take more of the day than the ritual does. Taiwan's Mid-Autumn carries one fixed feature found nowhere else: barbecue. It is not an old custom but a habit grown over recent decades, and it is now the most widespread activity of the day — on arcades, in parks, along the riverbanks, everyone is grilling, and the smell in the air identifies the date more reliably than the moon does. Pomelo and mooncakes remain; the barbecue simply turned moon-viewing from looking up into spending a whole evening outdoors.

        law.moj.gov.tw ↗hko.gov.hk ↗

      • September 15, 2027Local date

        How does China mark Mid-Autumn and Moon Viewing? · 中秋节

        Mainland China lists Mid-Autumn among the days off for all citizens, and the State Council published it in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage in 2006. The register records far more than mooncakes: the legends of the moon, Chang'e, the jade rabbit and Wu Gang; moon-offering rites; offerings for the earth god's birthday; divination; the gift of a melon as a wish for children; and moon viewing, cricket fighting and keeping katydids on autumn nights. It also carries a long list of alternative names — Moon Evening, Moon-Chasing Festival, Moon-Worship Festival, Daughters' Festival, Reunion Festival — each stressing something different.

        gov.cn ↗gov.cn ↗

      • September 15, 2027Local dateEstimated date

        How does China mark Mid-Autumn and Moon Viewing? · 中秋节（秋夕）· 延边朝鲜族

        There is more than one way to keep the day inside China. 'Mid-Autumn Festival (Chuseok)' of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin was listed separately in the third national batch in 2011, under the code X-5. For the Korean-ethnic community Chuseok begins with the graves: cleaning the tomb site and making offerings comes first, then an ox is slaughtered and wine prepared, freshly harvested grain is made into rice cake and pine-needle cake, and swings, seesaw and wrestling follow, over a season that can run several days. Same full moon, but the entrance is the cemetery rather than the mooncake.

        ihchina.cn ↗

      • September 15, 2027Local dateEstimated date

        How does Japan mark Mid-Autumn and Moon Viewing? · 中秋の名月（十五夜）

        Japan does not close for Mid-Autumn. It is called Jugoya or Chushu no Meigetsu, the night of the fifteenth day of the eighth month in the old calendar, marked with pampas grass and rice dumplings set out for the moon. The National Astronomical Observatory is explicit about something widely misunderstood: the harvest moon is not necessarily the full moon. The interval from new moon to full moon varies between about 13.9 and 15.6 days, because the Moon's orbit is elliptical and it travels faster when nearer the Earth. In 2026 the harvest moon falls on 25 September while the full moon comes two days later on the 27th; the next time the two land on the same date is 2030. Moon-viewing in Japan is not a single occasion: after the fifteenth night in autumn comes the thirteenth night about a month later, and the two are treated as a pair. Seeing one and missing the other was called the one-sided moon and held to be unlucky — so the unit of the festival here is not one evening but two, a month apart. What is set out is moon-viewing dumplings and pampas grass, the grass standing in for rice ears because the crop is not yet in when the moon is watched.

        nao.ac.jp ↗eco.mtk.nao.ac.jp ↗

      • Not observed hereLocal date

        Does Brazil have Mid-Autumn and Moon Viewing?

        There is no Mid-Autumn Festival in Brazil. The nationwide holidays are fixed by Law 662 of 1949 and Law 6.802 of 1980, and religious days are devolved by Law 9.093 of 1993 to the municipalities with a cap of four. That design leaves no slot for a lunar calendar, and Brazil's own harvest celebration sits in another season anyway: the Festas Juninas fall in June, which is winter in the southern hemisphere. Once the hemispheres are flipped, the very name 'mid-autumn' no longer even matches the season here.

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

      • Not observed hereLocal date

        Does Indonesia have Mid-Autumn and Moon Viewing?

        Indonesia's holiday table does contain one Chinese festival: Imlek, the Lunar New Year, a national holiday since 2002. But only that one — the Mid-Autumn is not on the list. So this cell is not about Chinese festivals being excluded; it is that the one recognised is the one that opens the year. The Mid-Autumn goes on as usual in temples and communities in Jakarta, Surabaya and Singkawang, and mooncakes appear in the shops around the eighth lunar month; it simply stays at the level of community and market and never reaches the national calendar.

        setneg.go.id ↗

      • Not observed hereLocal date

        Does India have Mid-Autumn and Moon Viewing?

        India has no Mid-Autumn Festival, but the same full moon carries its own name here: Sharad Purnima, called Kojagiri Purnima in Maharashtra — the full-moon night of the month of Ashwin, usually in October. The practice is to stay awake through the night in prayer to Lakshmi; Kojagiri means 'who is awake'. Kheer is set out under the moonlight and shared the next day as prasad, and the moon of this night is said to show all sixteen of its parts. The same full moon: reunion and mooncakes on one side, a vigil and a sweet left in the moonlight on the other.

        india.gov.in ↗maharashtratourism.gov.in ↗

      • Not observed hereLocal date

        Does United States have Mid-Autumn and Moon Viewing?

        There is no Mid-Autumn Festival in the United States. Not one of the eleven federal holidays takes the moon as its subject, and the closest thing to a harvest day is Thanksgiving — pinned by statute to the fourth Thursday of November, that is, pinned to a weekday rather than to a phase of the moon. That is exactly the watershed between two designs: one asks you to look up at tonight's moon, the other asks you to bundle the day into a weekend. The Mid-Autumn events in San Francisco and New York are run by communities and cities, and do not enter the holiday table.

        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.