Is Lunar New Year a public holiday in Australia?
No. Not in any of the eight states and territories.
Nothing changes because of it: shops keep their normal hours, schools keep their usual term dates, and no public-holiday penalty rate applies. Sydney and Melbourne run some of the largest celebrations outside Asia, but a celebration is not a public holiday — there is no entitlement to the day off, because no state or territory law names it.
The dates
| Year | Lunar New Year | A public holiday? |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 — year of the Horse | Tue 17 Feb | No — nowhere in the country |
| 2027 — year of the Goat | Sat 6 Feb | No — nowhere in the country |
| 2028 — year of the Monkey | Wed 26 Jan | Yes, for an unrelated reason: Australia Day |
2028 is the exception, and it is a coincidence
In 2028 Lunar New Year falls on Australia Day
Lunar New Year 2028 is Wednesday 26 January 2028, and 26 January is Australia Day. So the country does get the day off — for Australia Day. Nothing about that is a recognition of Lunar New Year, and in any year it does not land on 26 January, it is an ordinary working day again.
Six states and territories have published their 2028 dates and every one lists 26 January. NSW and WA have not published 2028 yet, and this site does not print a date a state has not published — so the table counts only the ones that have.
Where the dates come from
The one date on this site that is not read from an instrument
Lunar New Year is astronomical, not legislated — it is the first day of the first lunar month, and it appears in no Australian Act, so it cannot be read from one the way every other date here is. These come from the Hong Kong Observatory's Gregorian–Lunar conversion tables, whose plain-text files were read directly on Thursday 17 September 2026.
The Australian half is the site's own data, where every date cites the section of the Act it comes from — see public holidays by state and territory, or how the dates are checked.