China's Lunar New Year travel rush sparks record 9.5 billion trips

China’s National Development and Reform Commission expects a record 9.5 billion trips during the 40-day Spring Festival travel period, with officials saying about 540 million journeys will be made by train and 95 million by air, and “the rest will be on the road.” The projection, issued as the annual chunyun migration began in early February, will test already crowded railways, highways and airports across the country.

Travelers in Beijing offered a human scale to the official totals. Liu Zhiquan, a construction worker who waited for a 30-plus hour train to Chengdu, some 1,242 miles (2,000 kilometers) from the capital, chose the slower service to save money even though a high-speed trip would take about nine hours. A high-speed ticket, Liu said, costs more than twice as much. “Things feel worse this year than last. The economy is bad and it’s getting harder to make money,” he said, yet he was determined to make the journey home for the festival, a rare break from long work hours.

Others expressed the enduring cultural pull of the holiday. A young woman who recently started full-time work in Beijing, Tian Duofu, said she was looking forward to the nine-day holiday, which begins Feb. 15. Tian Yunxia, who runs a breakfast stall in Beijing and is originally from Henan province, put the motive simply: “The new year is the festival of the year, and if we don’t go back home, we won’t be able to enjoy the festival atmosphere,” she said. “I want to go home to see my children, my grandchildren and my husband.”

Chunyun is widely described as the world’s largest annual human migration. TravelChinaGuide, an industry site that outlines practical travel rules, notes that chunyun typically covers 15 days before and 25 days after the Lunar New Year and lists the 2026 period as February 2 to March 13. Official descriptions in the current campaign refer to a 40-day window around the Feb. 17 New Year holiday; the variation in calendar markers reflects how national holiday dates, statutory time off and local travel patterns overlap during the season.

Operational constraints are already apparent. TravelChinaGuide details real-name ticketing and identity verification rules, the need for a Chinese bank card for online payments and the fact that some downtown ticket outlets cannot issue tickets to foreign, Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan passengers. It advises travelers: “Try not to travel by train during the Chinese New Year Festival. If have to, below are some tips for you to avoid troubles: Buy tickets as early as possible.” Tickets at station windows or online typically open 15 days before a given departure, the site says, a schedule that pushes many to plan weeks ahead.

For transport authorities, the chal lenge is logistical and political: ensuring safety and order on packed trains and roads while responding to public frustrations about cost and service. For millions of low-paid migrants, the festival remains the central occasion to reunite with family, even when the price is a daylong trip and stretched household budgets. The scale of the official forecast underscores both the social importance of the holiday and the strains it places on China’s transport infrastructure and on the workers who sustain the country’s cities.