Chinese lunar calendar converter
Pick a Gregorian date to see the Chinese lunar date it falls on, or enter a lunar year, month and day to find the Gregorian date. The result also gives the animal and element of the lunar year, which starts at Lunar New Year, not on 1 January.
Runs in your browser: nothing you enter is sent anywhere.
How to use it
- Choose the direction: Gregorian to lunar or lunar to Gregorian.
- For the first, pick a date. For the second, enter the lunar year, month and day, and tick the leap month box if it is one.
- Read the result. For a lunar date it also shows the zodiac animal, element and yin or yang of the lunar year.
How it works
The Chinese calendar is lunisolar: each month starts at a new moon, and leap months keep it aligned with the sun. The tool asks your browser’s built-in Chinese calendar for the lunar date of a Gregorian day. To go the other way it checks the days of the matching Gregorian window until it finds the lunar date you entered, so a date that does not exist gives an error.
The lunar year is named by the Gregorian year in which it starts. The animal is that year minus 4, modulo 12, and the element comes from the last digit: 0 and 1 metal, 2 and 3 water, 4 and 5 wood, 6 and 7 fire, 8 and 9 earth.
Worked examples
- 17 February 2026 is lunar year 2026, month 1, day 1: Lunar New Year, a Fire Horse year.
- 15 January 2026 is lunar year 2025, month 11, day 27: still the Wood Snake year, even though the Gregorian year is 2026.
- 25 July 2025 is the first day of leap month 6.
Good to know
Lunar dates are counted by Chinese standard time. For anything official, check a published almanac. Local sightings and other traditions, such as the Vietnamese or Korean calendars, can differ by a day in rare years.
Frequently asked questions
When is Lunar New Year?
It is the first day of the first lunar month, between 21 January and 20 February. It fell on 17 February in 2026, the start of the Year of the Horse, and falls on 26 January in 2028. Enter lunar month 1, day 1 and a year to find it for any year.
What is a leap month in the Chinese calendar?
A lunar month lasts 29 or 30 days, so twelve of them are about 11 days short of a solar year. To keep the seasons in line, some years add a 13th month that repeats the number of an earlier one. 2025 had a leap month 6. Tick the leap month box to convert such a date.
Why does the zodiac animal change on a date in January or February?
The animal belongs to the lunar year, which begins at Lunar New Year. A date in January 2026 is still in lunar year 2025, the Snake, and from 17 February 2026 it is the Horse. This converter uses the lunar year of the exact date, so it settles those cases.
How accurate is the conversion?
It uses the Chinese calendar data built into your browser (the same source as the Intl API), which follows the astronomical rules for new moons in China. Dates between 1900 and 2100 are supported, but when a new moon falls within a few hours of midnight in China the built-in model can be a day off from published almanacs (Lunar New Year 2027 is 6 February, and the data may show 7 February). It does not cover the Chinese day or hour pillars used in fortune-telling.