The Sound of Firecrackers at Six in the Morning
The first thing you notice isn’t the red — it’s the noise. Somewhere around 6 AM on the first day of the Year of the Horse, a string of firecrackers goes off in the alley behind your hotel, and suddenly Taipei is awake. Not gradually, not politely. Just: awake. Car alarms, dog barking, the metallic rattle of shop shutters being yanked open. Welcome to Spring Festival in Taiwan.
2026’s Lunar New Year falls on February 17 (大年初一), with Chinese New Year’s Eve on February 16. The official holiday stretches from February 14 to February 22 — a full nine days off, the longest break of the year. By mid-January, train tickets are already gone and hotel prices in Taipei have doubled. This isn’t a gentle cultural event. It’s the gravitational center of Taiwanese life.
What Actually Happens During the Nine Days
Here’s the thing most travel guides gloss over: Taiwan basically shuts down. Not entirely, not everywhere, but enough that you’ll notice. From roughly 初一 to 初三 (February 17–19), a significant number of family-run restaurants, shops, and businesses close. The owners have gone home — often to central or southern Taiwan — to be with their families.
What stays open: convenience stores (always), chain restaurants (mostly), department stores (yes), major tourist attractions (usually). What closes: that incredible beef noodle place you bookmarked, probably. The small dumpling shop near your Airbnb, definitely.
The flip side is that the places that do stay open are absolutely packed. Night markets operate at a level of intensity that makes regular weekends look quiet. Temples overflow. Train stations become a particular kind of chaos that’s hard to describe if you haven’t experienced rush hour in Asia during a major holiday.
Temples at Midnight
The single most atmospheric experience during Taiwanese New Year happens at midnight on New Year’s Eve (February 16, turning into the 17th). Temples across the island hold prayer ceremonies, and the faithful line up to be among the first to offer incense in the new year.
Longshan Temple in Taipei’s Wanhua district is the most famous destination. The temple opens its doors on New Year’s Eve morning and stays open through the night — no closing, no break. By late evening, the crowd fills the courtyard and spills out onto Guangzhou Street. The air is thick with incense smoke, and the line to the main altar moves slowly.
A few things worth knowing: Longshan Temple has been moving toward digital services in recent years. You can now register for prayer lamps online (they sell out fast — tens of thousands of registrations). The temple suspends fortune stick divination (擲茭抽籤) from New Year’s Eve afternoon through 初三, so if that’s on your list, plan around it.
Fo Guang Shan in Kaohsiung offers a completely different scale — it’s one of the largest Buddhist monasteries in the world, and their New Year celebrations include bell-ringing ceremonies, chanting, and elaborate decorations across the sprawling complex. The atmosphere is calmer, more contemplative.
Night Markets in Overdrive
Taiwan’s night markets don’t take holidays. In fact, Spring Festival is when they go hardest. Vendors who might normally close on Mondays stay open all nine days, and temporary stalls pop up in spaces that are empty the rest of the year.
The seasonal foods are the draw. 年糕 (nian gao, sticky rice cake) appears in several forms — steamed, pan-fried, sometimes stuffed with red bean paste. 發糕 (fa gao, prosperity cake) is the one that rises in the steamer and supposedly predicts your financial luck for the year based on how much it cracks open. 湯圓 (tang yuan, glutinous rice balls) show up everywhere, though they’re technically more of a Lantern Festival thing.
Shiblin Night Market in Taipei is the default recommendation, and honestly it’s fine — overwhelming, loud, and staggeringly large. But if you want something a little less chaotic, Ningxia Night Market is smaller and more food-focused. In Kaohsiung, Liuhe Night Market has been a fixture since the 1950s and the seafood stalls there are genuinely good.
The crowds, though. I want to be honest about the crowds. On 初一 and 初二, popular night markets are shoulder-to-shoulder. Moving through Shilin on these nights involves a shuffling, stop-start pace that can take 20 minutes to cover a hundred meters. If claustrophobia is an issue, go on 初四 or later, when things thin out slightly.
For booking day trips to night markets and temples outside Taipei, KKday runs packages that include transport — useful if you don’t want to navigate the holiday train schedule yourself.
The Taipei 101 Question
A note of clarification, because the internet is confusing on this: Taipei 101’s famous fireworks show happens on December 31 (Western New Year’s Eve), not during Lunar New Year. If you’re arriving in mid-February for Spring Festival, you’ve missed the 101 countdown by about six weeks.
What Taipei 101 does do during Spring Festival is host special decorations, shopping promotions, and occasionally themed events in the mall. The observation deck is open (and busy). But the pyrotechnics? Those are a December thing.
The actual fireworks during Lunar New Year are smaller and more scattered — individual firecrackers and small rockets set off in neighborhoods, temple courtyards, and outside businesses. It’s less of a show and more of an ambient soundscape that doesn’t really stop for three days.
Getting There and Getting Around
This is the part where things get practical and slightly stressful.
Flights: International flights to Taiwan around Spring Festival are expensive. Domestic flights within Taiwan (say, Taipei to Kaohsiung or Taitung) sell out weeks in advance. Book early or accept that you’ll be taking the train.
High-Speed Rail (HSR): The Taipei–Kaohsiung route is the spine of Taiwan’s transport system, and during Spring Festival it operates at maximum capacity. Tickets go on sale about two weeks before the holiday. Set an alarm. The HSR website tends to crash on the first day of sales.
Cash: Night market vendors almost universally deal in cash. Temples deal in cash. The good news is that 7-Eleven and FamilyMart ATMs are literally everywhere — Taiwan has one of the highest convenience store densities in the world. Withdraw NT$ in reasonable amounts and keep small bills handy.
If you’re planning to stay in Taipei, booking through Booking.com well in advance is worth the peace of mind. Prices jump 30-50% during the holiday week, and availability drops fast — especially for anything near MRT stations.
Weather and What to Pack
Late February in northern Taiwan is cool and damp. Expect temperatures around 12–18°C in Taipei, with frequent drizzle. It’s not bitterly cold, but the humidity makes it feel chillier than the numbers suggest. Layers are essential. A compact umbrella is non-negotiable.
Southern Taiwan (Kaohsiung, Tainan) is noticeably warmer — often in the low 20s — and gets less rain. If you’re choosing between spending Spring Festival in the north or south, weather is a legitimate factor.
Pingxi Sky Lanterns — Close But Not Quite Spring Festival
The Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival is often mentioned alongside Lunar New Year, and they’re related — but the lantern festival happens on 元宵節 (Lantern Festival), which falls on March 3 in 2026, about two weeks after 初一. There’s also an earlier session on February 27 at Pingxi Junior High School.
If your trip overlaps with early March, it’s absolutely worth attending. Hundreds of sky lanterns released simultaneously over the Pingxi valley is genuinely magical — probably the single most photogenic event in Taiwan’s festival calendar. But don’t plan your Spring Festival trip expecting to see it unless you’re staying through the first week of March.
For skip-the-line access and transport to Pingxi, KLOOK offers day-trip packages from Taipei that handle the logistics. The mountain roads get congested during the festival, so having transport sorted in advance helps.
Red Envelopes, and the Math Behind Them
Red envelopes (紅包, hong bao) are central to the holiday. The basic rule: married adults give them to unmarried younger relatives and to elderly parents. The amounts vary — NT$600, NT$1,200, NT$1,600, NT$2,200 are common figures. Even numbers only, and never amounts containing the number 4 (which sounds like “death” in Chinese).
As a tourist, you won’t be expected to give red envelopes, but you might receive one from a particularly generous hotel owner or shopkeeper. It’s a kindness — accept it with both hands and say thank you.
After the Firecrackers Stop
By 初五 (February 21), things start returning to normal. Shops reopen. The highways clear. The overnight trains stop being sold out. There’s a collective exhale across the island — nine days of family obligations, temple visits, and nonstop eating takes it out of everyone.
I walked past a 7-Eleven on what I think was 初六, and the clerk was stacking shelves with the kind of focused energy that only comes from having had a week off. The New Year decorations were still up, but the vibe had shifted. Back to work. Back to normal. The horse-year lanterns would stay up for a few more weeks, getting slightly dusty, before someone quietly took them down.
