When is Chinese New Year 2025 and which animal is it this time?
Chinese New Year — also known as Lunar New Year or Spring Festival — falls on Wednesday 29 January 2025, although in China, celebrations take place for a few weeks either side of this. Each year is represented by one of the 12 Chinese Zodiac signs; 2025 is the Year of the Snake, an animal said to symbolise wisdom, intuition and transformation. Other Asian countries that celebrate at this time include Tibet, Vietnam and Korea.
London's Chinese New Year Parade and Trafalgar Square celebrations on 1 and 2 February 2025
Central London springs into life on the weekend of 1 and 2 February — with the highly-anticipated merrymaking around Chinatown, Trafalgar Square and Soho.
On Saturday 1 February 2025 lion dance performances weave through the streets of Chinatown between 11am-5pm.
The major celebrations happen on Sunday 2 February 2025, with the Chinese New Year Parade and ist surrounding festivities. The parade itself departs from the east side of Trafalgar Square at 10am, wending its way along Charing Cross Road and down Shaftesbury Avenue, before dispersing on Wardour Street and into Chinatown around 11.45am. Featuring the largest gathering of Chinese dragons and lions in Europe — and awash with traditional drumming and dancing — it is quite a sight/sound. You can also expect luminescent floats, flags and, if you're lucky, a double-decker bus.
For the rest of the day (12pm-6pm) there's lion dancing, stalls and Asian street food in Chinatown; cultural workshops and family activities in Leicester Square; and a whole lot of performances, stalls, speeches and the like in Trafalgar Square, where a stage will also be erected.
For more info on the above, visit the Chinatown website.
Events to celebrate Chinese New Year and Lunar New Year in London
Here are some other Lunar New Year events going on in London:
IVY ASIA: Not one but two set menus are available at the Ivy Asia (Chelsea, Mayfair and St Paul's). The Lunar Dragon Set Lunch Menu includes the likes of BBQ pork bao buns, honey and sesame chicken, and passion fruit and coconut doughnuts with yoghurt dipping sauce. There's also a Lunar Samurai Set Dinner Menu, offering dishes such as BBQ duck and clementine salad with hoisin and water chestnut, and king oyster and shiitake mushroom dumplings with XO Sauce. 15 January-28 February
GOOD LUCK BAO: All branches of the Taiwanese eatery BAO (City, Marylebone, King's Cross, Shoreditch and Battersea) honour the New Year by giving set menu diners a red envelope containing a variety of snake themed prizes inc. vouchers, t-shirts and a chance for a BAO on the house every day for a year. They're also serving pistachio-filled snakes (not real ones). 20 January-9 February
LUNAR NEW YEAR CELEBRATIONS: Dear Asia in Aldgate, which teaches Japanese, Korean and Chinese language, hosts two Lunar New Year celebrations — a mahjong workshop on 25 January, followed by Year of the Snake celebrations on 29 January, featuring Lunar New Year snacks, tea, traditional New Year crafts, and fortune stick telling. 25 and 29 January
LUNAR NEW YEAR MENU: Canton Blue, the upmarket Cantonese restaurant in The Peninsula at Hyde Park Corner, becomes Canton Red to mark the celebratory season. The festive shake-up comes with a special three-course menu featuring dishes including golden fish dumplings, and deep-fried lobster. At £188pp, it's anything but thrifty, although the restaurant's Tea Lounge also hosts daily Chinese tea masterclasses inc. light dim sum, pastries and traditional sweets, for £48pp. There's also lion and dragon dancing in the hotel courtyard, from 11am-12pm on Wednesday 29 January, which is free to enjoy. 25 January-5 February
SEAFOOD FEAST: Plates of seven coloured fish salad, Brown shrimp taro puff, and Smoked eel and cod siu mai wash up at Tooting's Daddy Bao, for a night of New Year seafood feasting Taiwanese style. 27 January
TWO HOT ASIANS: Emily Yeoh of the Two Hot Asians hot sauce brand is at Mama Shelter in Shoreditch for a one-off Lunar New Year supper club. Watch Emily rustle up the three-course menu, with dishes including sesame prawn toast, Hainanese-style roast chicken, and pandan tres leches cake. 29 January
LUCKY LOUSHENG: Herd up some mates and get them to Med Salleh Kopitiam in Bayswater, which is serving made-to-order 'Lucky Loucheng' salad — a vibrant concoction of shredded carrot, radish and yam with crispy vermicelli, topped with roasted peanuts, sesame seeds, tuna and salmon sashimi, caviar... and edible gold leaf. If that lot doesn't bring you luck, nothing will. Pre-ordering is essential. 29 January-12 February
DRAGON DUMPLINGS: Of the multitude of dumplings being munched this Lunar New Year, it'd be hard to beat the dragon-faced cuties from XI Home Dumplings Bay — for aesthetics alone. The sweet steamed buns come with a choice of four fillings: custard egg yolk, sweet ube and taro, truffle chocolate and custard matcha. They'll also set you back £12 apiece — make sure you get a good photo. 29 January-end of February
BRITISH VIETNAMESE HOUSE: Museum of the Home in Hoxton hosts the late Housewarming: A British Vietnamese Home on 30 January. Their British Vietnamese Home setup has been specially decked out for Tết, the Vietnamese New Year. FREE, 30 January
CHINESE ASTRONOMY: The Royal Observatory in Greenwich hosts a Chinese astronomy show at the Planetarium. It's given in English (though bilingual shows are available on other dates throughout the year), and covers topics in ancient and modern Chinese astronomy, including the Sun, Moon, stars and space exploration. 1 February
GREENWICH PENINSULA: Dragon and lion dances, bamboo weaving, Chinese knot-making, woodblock printing and paper cutting workshops, competitive mahjong workshops and games, spiritual tea-tasting sessions, and a variety of South Asian dishes: all are on the cards — some free, others paid-for — at a bonanza day of celebrations at Greenwich Peninsula. 1 February
WORKSHOPS: Old Spitalfields Market in east London hosts two days of lantern making, tea tasting, pickling, dumpling cooking and the like. Events vary from free to £20 — check out the deets. 1-2 February
MORE ASIAN FOOD AND DRINK: Where else to feed on good Asian food in London? The obvious advice is to head to Chinatown, the heartlands of London's Chinese community, and home to a slew of places dishing up scrummy noodles, dim sum, cakes and the like. Many will be doing something special for New Year. Nearby Fitzrovia and Holborn are also scattered with excellent Chinese restaurants.
Other hubs of Asian food we'd suggest are New Malden for Korean, and Hackney for Vietnamese. And here are 5 amazing places to eat Asian food in central London, as recommended to Londonist by Michelin-starred chef and founder of Chinatown's Viet Food, Jess Tan.
For Tibetan food in London, Kailash Momo in Woolwich comes recommended by our readers.
Dragons around London
A dragon is for life, not just for Lunar New Year. For extracurricular dragon-finding, read our articles about the dragons of London, that time we gave all the City of London dragons names, and when we went dragon boating on the Thames.
