The Lunar New Year, also known as Chinese New Year, is one of most significant events of the year in many Asian cultures. The festivities kick off on the first day of the first lunar month in the calendar, culminating with the ‘Lantern Festival’ on the 15th day.
The date changes every year, but in 2025, it falls on Wednesday, January 29. In many cultures, each year is also linked to an animal from the zodiac, often shared across various Asian countries like China, South Korea, North Korea, Singapore and Cambodia, reports Royal Museums Greenwich. Below is the list of animals for each year coming up.
- 2025: Year of the snake
- 2026: Year of the horse
- 2027: Year of the goat
- 2028: Year of the monkey
- 2029: Year of the rooster
In Japan, there’s no pig on the zodiac wheel; instead, they honour the boar.
Cats take the stage in Vietnam’s zodiac replacing the rabbit, perhaps due to an intriguing linguistic mix-up with the Chinese word for “rabbit” sounding suspiciously like “meo”, meaning “cat” in Vietnamese. Also, the country swaps out the ox for the buffalo.
Lunar New Year is a huge celebration across many countries
(Image: Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Thai tradition steps away from the dragon, favouring the naga, a serpent said to bring fertility and riches.
One unique aspect of the Chinese zodiac is its lack of sequential year counting, setting it apart from most other calendars.
In Chinese tradition, years are named in a cycle that repeats every 60 years, corresponding to five rotations of the Chinese zodiac’s 12 animals. The sequence of animals in the Chinese zodiac is: rat, ox, tiger, hare or rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig.
This system for naming years has been in use for about the last 2000 years, but is traditionally traced back to 2637 BCE when the calendar was believed to have been invented. The current 60-year cycle began on February 2, 1984.
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