Chinese New Year 2027 starts 29 January. UK importers need to act now. Here’s the complete factory closure dates and stock planning guide.
In summary: Chinese New Year 2027 falls on Friday, 29 January 2027, marking the start of the Year of the Goat. For UK businesses importing from China, this means factories across Guangdong, Zhejiang, Fujian and beyond will close for 2–4 weeks from mid-to-late January. If you haven’t placed your pre-CNY production orders by November 2026, you risk running out of stock in January–March 2027. This guide gives UK importers the exact planning timeline, factory deadline dates, and practical steps to keep their supply chains running smoothly through China’s biggest annual shutdown.
Imagine it. Billions of people. Hundreds of millions of migrant workers. One enormous, coordinated, joyful exodus from the industrial cities of southern and eastern China back to their home provinces. Red envelopes changing hands. Dumplings being folded. Fireworks going off at midnight. And your factory — the one that makes your product — sitting dark and silent for the best part of a month.
This is Chinese New Year. And if you’re importing from China, it is, without question, the most important date in your sourcing calendar.
Chinese New Year 2027 — the Year of the Goat — begins on Friday, 29 January 2027. The official public holiday runs for seven days, but the reality for UK importers is far more disrupted than that. Factory workers often leave a week or more early. Many don’t return until mid-February. And when they do come back, production lines don’t just switch straight back on — there are staff shortages, quality teething issues, and a backlog of orders from every buyer who left it too late.
September 2026 is when smart UK importers start their CNY planning. This is your guide.
The official Chinese New Year public holiday for 2027 runs from approximately 28 January to 3 February. But the real factory closure window is considerably wider. Here’s what you should actually plan for:
Factory slowdown begins: Mid-January 2027. Production lines start running at reduced capacity as workers begin taking leave early. Quality can dip during this period as experienced staff leave ahead of the holiday.
Most factories fully closed: 20–29 January 2027 (the week before CNY and the holiday itself). Essentially nothing is being produced during this window.
Gradual restart: 10–17 February 2027. Factories begin reopening, but with reduced headcount. Many workers take extended leave or don’t return at all, forcing factories to hire and train new staff. This period is often characterised by quality issues and production delays.
Full production resumes: Late February to early March 2027. This is when factories are typically back to normal operational capacity and able to fulfil orders reliably.
For UK importers using sea freight, your goods take 4–6 weeks to travel from China to the UK. Work backwards from 29 January 2027, and you need your goods loaded on a vessel by mid-December 2026 at the very latest to guarantee pre-CNY arrival. That means production needs to be completed by late November or early December. Which means your purchase order needs to be placed no later than October 2026 — and ideally September — if lead times are 60–90 days.
Sourcing Hack #1: Don’t calculate from CNY date — calculate backwards from when you need UK stock. Work out: when do I need inventory in my UK warehouse? Subtract your buffer stock days, your customs clearance time, your sea freight transit time (typically 30–35 days from a major Chinese port to Felixstowe or Southampton), and your production lead time. That’s when your purchase order needs to be placed. For most UK importers ordering in standard volumes, that date in 2026 is October at the latest.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: a lot of UK businesses will miss the window. They’re busy. They’re managing customers. They forget that mid-December is too late. They tell themselves the factory will be back in February and they’ll be fine. And then March arrives, the factory is struggling to ramp up, their products are stuck in a production queue behind everyone else who also left it late, and they’re facing six weeks with no stock.
For an Amazon FBA seller, six weeks without stock means lost rankings. On Amazon’s algorithm, a stockout is a gift to your competitors — they’ll climb the rankings while you’re absent, and clawing them back is expensive and slow. For a Shopify store, it means disappointed customers, lost revenue, and potentially losing subscribers you’ve spent months acquiring.
For a business that sources private label products with meaningful lead times, a delayed order isn’t just inconvenient — it can wipe out an entire quarter of revenue.
This isn’t a hypothetical. Every year, without fail, we hear from UK businesses in February and March who are scrambling because they didn’t plan for CNY. Don’t be that business in 2027.
Sourcing Hack #2: Place your CNY buffer order now. If you normally keep 30 days of safety stock, increase it to 60–75 days ahead of CNY. This buffer absorbs factory delays, post-CNY quality teething issues, and the inevitable surge in freight rates that hits when every buyer simultaneously tries to rush goods out before the holiday. Yes, it ties up more working capital — but it’s far cheaper than a stockout. Talk to your sourcing agent about structuring an order that builds this buffer without over-committing.
Let’s make this practical. Here’s the month-by-month calendar for UK importers from now through to March 2027.
September 2026 (now): Assess your current inventory. Calculate how long your existing stock will last. Identify which products need reordering before CNY. Confirm your supplier’s planned CNY closure dates — every factory is slightly different.
October 2026: Place your main pre-CNY production orders. Confirm lead times with your factories. If lead times are under 45 days, you may have until early November — but don’t push it. Also: book your sea freight space early. Vessels fill up fast before CNY, and freight rates spike.
November 2026: Final orders placed for anything with standard 30–45 day lead times. Begin monitoring production progress. If using a sourcing agent, request weekly factory updates. Alert your 3PL or warehouse to expect a larger-than-normal inbound shipment in December.
December 2026: Goods should be in production or completed. Sea freight bookings confirmed. For any last-minute needs, air freight is your only option (expensive — plan to avoid this). Your pre-CNY stock should be arriving in UK warehouses during this month.
January 2027: Stock up and running in the UK. Factories wind down and close from mid-January. Do NOT place production orders expecting fulfilment before CNY — they won’t happen. Focus on managing UK inventory and preparing post-CNY order briefs.
February 2027: Factories reopen from mid-February. Expect quality variation in the first 1–2 weeks as lines restart. Place post-CNY orders once your factory confirms full team is back. Budget for slightly higher freight costs as the post-CNY surge settles.
March 2027: Normal production rhythm resumes. Post-CNY orders should be in production. Factory teams stabilise.
Sourcing Hack #3: Always ask your factory their specific CNY closure and reopening dates — not just “when is CNY.” Different factories in different provinces operate on slightly different schedules. A factory in Shandong may close later and reopen earlier than one in Guangdong. And factories with majority local staff (rather than migrant workers) may have shorter closures. Your sourcing agent should be asking these questions on your behalf — it’s a standard part of a good China sourcing relationship.
As CNY approaches, the sea freight market gets increasingly chaotic. Here’s what to expect:
October–November 2026: Sea freight rates begin rising as demand for pre-CNY shipments builds. Book your space early — this is not the moment to assume space will be available on short notice.
December 2026: Peak demand. Freight rates at their highest. Some shipments are delayed due to port congestion at major Chinese ports (Ningbo, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou). If your goods aren’t confirmed as loaded by mid-December, they’re not arriving pre-CNY by sea.
Air freight as a last resort: If you’ve missed the sea freight window and need stock urgently, air freight from China to the UK typically takes 5–7 days. The cost? Roughly 5–10x more per kg than sea freight. Fine for emergency top-ups of high-value, low-volume products. Disastrous for large, heavy shipments. Budget carefully.
For UK importers with regular orders, the sea freight vs air freight guide on the Epic Sourcing website has a detailed cost breakdown and decision framework worth bookmarking.
Sourcing Hack #4: Split your CNY order into two tranches if possible. Ship 70% of your pre-CNY stock by sea (book October), and reserve 30% as a “top-up” tranche by air freight in late November / early December if your sea shipment faces delays. This two-tranche approach gives you flexibility without fully committing to the expensive air option for your whole order. It’s a strategy we regularly recommend to our UK clients managing tighter stock buffers.
Here’s something that surprises first-time importers: the 2–3 weeks after factories reopen can be almost as challenging as the holiday closure itself. Why? Because every factory is dealing with:
Staff turnover. A significant percentage of factory workers don’t return after CNY. They’ve found work closer to home, changed jobs, or simply don’t come back. Factories spend February and early March recruiting and training new staff. During this period, production capacity is reduced and quality control needs extra attention.
Production backlogs. Every buyer who left it late is now placing urgent post-CNY orders simultaneously. Factories are overwhelmed. Lead times can extend by 2–4 weeks beyond normal for the first month after CNY.
Supplier price increases. CNY is when many Chinese factories implement annual price increases — new wages, new material costs, new energy costs. Don’t be surprised if your factory contacts you in January with a price adjustment for 2027. This is normal. How well you’re positioned to negotiate depends on your order volume and relationship — another reason why working through a structured Private Label or White Label sourcing programme gives you leverage.
All of which reinforces the main message: the businesses that prepare for CNY properly — with sufficient buffer stock and orders placed on time — don’t just survive the January-February disruption. They thrive during it, because their competitors are scrambling.
Managing a Chinese New Year disruption from the UK is genuinely hard. You’re time-zone separated from your suppliers, language barriers exist, and you’re relying on your factory to proactively communicate delays — which they often don’t, because bad news travels slowly in supplier relationships.
This is one of the areas where working with a sourcing agent with boots on the ground in China pays for itself many times over. Our team at Epic Sourcing is based in China year-round. We speak Mandarin. We know our factory contacts personally. And around CNY, we’re doing exactly what you’d want someone to do on your behalf: confirming closure dates, monitoring production progress, chasing completions before the factory goes dark, and providing weekly updates to our UK clients.
We also use CNY as a natural moment to assess supplier performance — were lead times met? Quality on spec? Communication responsive? — and to open conversations about post-CNY pricing before the factories initiate them. Having that conversation proactively is almost always better than being on the receiving end of a price increase letter in February.
If you’re currently self-sourcing through Alibaba and managing the factory relationship yourself from the UK, the CNY period is when the gaps in that approach show up most clearly. Our post on safety checks before your first Alibaba purchase covers some of the risks — and our guide to finding reliable manufacturers in China is worth reading if you’re considering working more directly with factories.
Chinese New Year 2027 doesn’t exist in isolation. It sits within a broader context that UK importers should be thinking about: the ongoing shift of some production from China to Vietnam, the upcoming changes to UK customs duty thresholds in 2028, and the general professionalisation of the UK import market.
If you’re sourcing any products from Vietnam as part of a China-plus-one strategy, note that Vietnam also has its own Lunar New Year holiday (Tết) — which typically coincides with Chinese New Year. Vietnamese factories face similar disruption patterns to Chinese ones, though the duration and timing can vary slightly.
For UK importers managing supply chains that span both China and Vietnam, CNY/Tết planning is even more important — and coordinating two sets of factory closures, freight bookings, and production schedules simultaneously is a task that benefits from experienced sourcing support.
You can find more context on the UK import landscape and what’s changing in 2026–2028 in our companion post: The £135 De Minimis Threshold Is Ending in 2028: What UK Importers Must Do Now. Both changes — CNY disruption and the duty threshold shift — reward businesses that plan ahead.
The power of OEM manufacturing for small businesses is also worth reading as you think about how to structure your product development and production pipeline around these annual disruption windows.
Chinese New Year 2027 falls on Friday, 29 January 2027 — the start of the Year of the Goat. The official public holiday runs for seven days (29 January to 4 February), but factory closures in practice extend from roughly 20 January to 17 February 2027, depending on the region and factory. UK importers should plan around a 4-week effective production shutdown window.
For standard sea freight with a 4–6 week transit time and a 45–60 day production lead time, your purchase orders should be placed no later than October 2026. If your products have shorter lead times (30–45 days), early November may still be viable — but don’t push it. The sea freight booking deadline to guarantee pre-CNY loading is typically mid-December 2026. September 2026 is the ideal time to start placing pre-CNY orders.
If your order isn’t completed and loaded for sea freight by mid-December 2026, your goods will not arrive in the UK before Chinese New Year. Your next realistic window for sea freight shipments would be late February to March 2027, when factories have fully restarted. In the interim, you’d need to rely on existing stock or very expensive air freight for emergency top-ups. Missing the window typically means a 6–10 week gap in new inventory supply.
Yes. Vietnam celebrates Tết (Vietnamese New Year), which follows the same lunar calendar as Chinese New Year. Tết 2027 also falls around 29 January 2027. Vietnamese factories experience similar disruption patterns to Chinese ones — closure for 1–3 weeks, followed by a gradual restart with potential staff shortages and production teething issues. UK importers sourcing from Vietnam should apply the same pre-Tết planning principles.
Sea freight rates typically rise by 20–50% in the 6–8 weeks before CNY as every importer rushes to ship goods before the holiday. Port congestion at major Chinese export hubs (Ningbo, Shanghai, Shenzhen) can cause additional delays and surcharges. Booking freight space early — ideally by October for December shipments — gives you more competitive rates and avoids the pre-CNY crush. After CNY, rates normalise over 4–6 weeks as the backlog clears.
If you have significant import volumes and multiple product lines, yes. A sourcing agent with China-based staff can monitor your factory’s production progress during the pre-CNY rush, confirm closure and reopening dates, chase completions, and manage quality control — all while you’re sleeping in a different time zone. The CNY period is precisely when having someone with local presence and language skills makes the biggest difference to supply chain reliability. Get in touch with Epic Sourcing UK to discuss how we support clients through the CNY period.
The CNY disruption typically ties up more working capital — you’re holding more safety stock than usual, paying for larger pre-CNY orders, and potentially facing higher freight costs. Planning options include: using trade finance or invoice finance to spread the cost of larger pre-CNY orders, negotiating extended payment terms with your factory (easier with a sourcing agent relationship), and building a rolling 60-day safety stock policy year-round so CNY doesn’t require a dramatic inventory spike. A Private Label sourcing programme with regular consolidated orders often naturally builds the buffer stock cadence that protects against CNY gaps.
Chinese New Year 2027 is roughly five months away. That sounds like a long time — until you factor in lead times, freight booking windows, production schedules, and the general reality that supply chains move slower than we’d like. September is not too early to start. It might, for some products and some volumes, be exactly the right time.
If you’d like help thinking through your CNY 2027 planning — whether that’s reviewing your order schedule, identifying suppliers, or stress-testing your current inventory position against a 6-week factory closure — the Epic Sourcing UK team is here. Book a discovery call or email us at hello@epicsourcing.co.uk. We help UK SMEs and eCommerce businesses source smarter, plan better, and never get caught short by a factory holiday again.
Also worth reading alongside this post: The £135 De Minimis Threshold Is Ending in 2028: What UK Importers Must Do Now — another major planning consideration for UK importers in 2026.
Written by TK Wang, Founder & Director @ Epic Sourcing
