Chinese calendar
Convert Gregorian dates to Chinese lunar months, check zodiac animals and elements, and plan around Lunar New Year, Mid-Autumn, Qingming, Duanwu, and other festival dates.
Lunar month 5, day 4
A purely lunar calendar follows moon phases and drifts through the seasons. A purely solar calendar follows the sun and ignores lunar months. The Chinese calendar is lunisolar: each month starts near a new moon, while leap months keep the year aligned with the seasonal solar terms. That is why Lunar New Year usually falls between late January and late February instead of on a fixed Gregorian date.
The year name combines a heavenly stem and an earthly branch. The branch gives the familiar zodiac animal, while the stem gives wood, fire, earth, metal, or water and a yin or yang polarity. The full sexagenary name repeats every 60 years, so two dragon years can differ by element and polarity.
Leap months are inserted when the lunar month sequence would otherwise slip away from the solar terms. In the 1900-2100 table used here, the leap month adjacent to 2026 is leap sixth month in Chinese year 2025, while Chinese year 2026 itself has twelve lunar months. The practical effect is simple: some lunar month numbers repeat in leap years, and festival dates still use the regular month unless a tradition explicitly says otherwise.