Mid Autumn Festival 2025 is coming, a time to eat mooncakes, make lanterns, and celebrate with family. But what is the full story of the festival?
Held every year on the 15th day of the 8th Month in the lunar calendar, Mid-Autumn Festival is celebrated across much of East and Southeast Asia. In China, it is one of the most important festivals of the year after the Chinese New Year. It is also known as the moon festival or the mooncake festival, in Chinese it is called Zhong-Qiu Jie (中秋节).
Due to being based on the lunar calendar, the date of the Mid Autumn Festival changes each year. This year, Mid Autumn festival lands on Monday, 6th October 2025.
What is Mid Autumn Festival?
Mid Autumn Festival is linked to the harvest and moon. Like much of the world, celebrating the harvest and moon has existed for a long time in China. There, the practice dates back well over 3000 years. but more formal festivities started during the Tang dynasty (618–907 AD). Soon, Mid-Autumn Festival became a major folk festival.
Many believe it was first mentioned in the “Book of Rites,” a book on bureaucracy and rituals written more than 2,400 years ago. There, it was described as a day for emperors to celebrate the harvest. Activities included giving offerings to the moon and hosting a great feast.
By the time of Empress Dowager Cixi in the late 19th century, it was so popular that she would spend days carrying out elaborate rituals for the festival.
Today, the harvest is not as significant as it once was, but Mid-Autumn Festival remains one of the most important festivities of the year in China. It is ingrained into popular culture and is a national holiday with a day off school and work.
Celebrating Mid Autumn Festival
Today, celebrations include decorating lanterns, giving mooncakes, and eating with family or friends.
Lanterns have long been associated with Mid-Autumn Festival. It is common to decorate lanterns, hang them up at your house, or release them into the sky.
However, perhaps the biggest star of the festival is mooncakes. Legend says they originated with the overthrow of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, which ruled over China in the 13th century. To stage an uprising, rebel leader Liu Bowen suggested hiding notes within mooncakes than handing them out. The note read: “Kill the Mongols on the 15th day of the eighth month”.
Today, it is common to buy mooncakes as gifts and eat them yourself. Traditional mooncakes vary from city to city and province to province. Cantonese mooncakes are lotus-like in shape with a decorative pattern on top. Inside the golden-brown pastry is a sweet filling traditionally of lotus paste and salted egg yolk. Head to Suzhou, and mooncakes will be savoury with a flaky crust containing a meat filling. Capitalism has also come for mooncakes, they come in so many different forms and flavours that it can be almost overwhelming. A popular modern twist is ice cream mooncakes, a traditional mooncake shape but made entirely out of ice cream.
With an extra day of work in China it is also common to take a long weekend away during Mid-Autumn festival: returning home to visit family, heading to a new city to explore, or traveling to the countryside for a relaxing time away. Wherever you are, it is normal to sit down with family or friends to enjoy a feast.
The Legend of Chang’e
Like all good celebrations, Mid-Autumn festival has its own legend. There are many different ones intertwined with Mid Autumn Festival, but the most famous is about the archer Hou Yi and his wife Chang’e.
After shooting down nine of the ten suns in the sky that had been scorching the earth, Hou Yi received an elixir of immortality from the gods. Not wanting to leave his wife, Hou Yi opted not to drink the elixir and instead gave it to his wife Chang’e for safekeeping.
However, when Hou Yi’s apprentice, Feng Meng, attempted to steal the elixir for himself, Chang’e stopped him by drinking the elixir herself.
Chang’e become immortal and floated up into the sky. Choosing the moon to be her new home in order to look down upon her husband.
From then on, at mid-autumn, Hou Yi would lay out cakes and food for his wife. Looking up at the moon hoping to catch a glimpse of her, but unable to meet.
Mid Autumn Festival Events in the UK
We will be giving you the lowdown on all the Mid Autumn Festival 2025 celebration in the UK, this article will be updated as we share new events, so come back and check soon!
