The 2027 Chinese New Year calendar, in plain numbers
Chinese New Year 2027 falls on Saturday, February 6. New Year's Eve is Friday, February 5.
The official holiday notice won't come out until late October or November. Based on the pattern of recent years, here's what actually happens in the Pearl River Delta:
- Lines wind down between January 22–30 as factories finish in-hand orders and race shipping cutoffs. By February 1, most workers are on trains home.
- Production restarts around February 20, with skeleton crews at first.
- Full capacity comes back in the first week of March.
So Q1 2027 has three real working weeks in January, a near-dark February, and a March where every factory's backlog lands on the floor in the same two weeks. A standard 45-day lead time quoted in December quietly becomes 60–70 days in March. Same machines. Longer queue.
A single frame pulls together seven or eight upstream links - acetate sheet, lenses, hinges, metal cores, electroplating, pad printing, packaging. These are specialized processes, each with its own schedule, and the people running them tend to keep a longer New Year break than factory workers. In our experience, the eyewear supply chain as a whole stays dark about ten days longer than general manufacturing.
Three reasons a year-end PO wins
1. The exchange rate has already moved. The yuan has strengthened roughly 9% against the dollar since early 2025. Suppliers who held their dollar prices through 2026 will adjust in 2027 - many have told us as much. A PO confirmed in Q4 2026 locks the number on your quote.
2. January line slots go first-come. Orders confirmed in November–December get cut, polished, and packed before the shutdown. They ship in late January or early February. Orders confirmed in January join the post-holiday queue behind everyone else's spring programs.
3. Materials disappear in February. Acetate sheet, TAC polarized lenses, TR90 pellets, hinge hardware, packaging boxes - our upstream suppliers shut down too. Material allocated in December is material you don't chase in March. We've seen February orders stall for three weeks waiting on a single acetate colorway. It's a bad place to be.
What the timeline looks like
| PO confirmed | Production slot | Earliest delivery |
|---|
| November–December 2026 | January line | Late January / early February 2027 |
| January 2027 | Post-CNY restart | Late March / early April 2027 |
| February–March 2027 | Backlogged spring queue | May 2027 or later |
The gap between confirming now and waiting until Q1 is six to eight weeks of delivery time. For a brand launching a spring collection, that usually decides whether the frames hit the shelf in March or arrive in May.
How Leeyewear handles this
We are taking Q1 2027 POs now. Send specs in November, and we confirm material allocation, hold a January line slot, and give you a fixed delivery date in writing before the shutdown. Price holds from PO confirmation and deposit - that's the standard terms, and we'd rather state them plainly than surprise you in March.
If your program is in sampling, approve the production samples this month - pre-holiday sample approval is what separates January shipments from March ones. Still choosing styles? Send reference frames and lens colors; we check stock material and quote within 24 hours.
Leeyewear - eyewear manufacturer in Shenzhen, China. Private label acetate sunglasses, TR90 sport sunglasses, and titanium optical frames, OEM and ODM, serving brands and retail chains in Europe, North America, and Japan.