Where to Celebrate the 2025 Lunar New Year in Portland
Lantern displays are one of the many Lunar New Year festivities at the Lan Su Chinese Gardens in Old Town-Chinatown.
The new moon, on Wednesday, January 29, opens 2025 on the lunar calendar, the Chinese Zodiac’s Year of the Snake. While most cultures today coordinate with the Gregorian calendar, guided by the Earth’s orbit around the sun, the lunar calendar, which follows the moon’s cycles around Earth, marks major religious and secular holidays for many cultures around the globe, especially across Asia. In Portland, Chinese and Vietnamese celebrations are most common, though many events adopt a multicultural approach. Both Chinese and Vietnamese New Year celebrations involve a few weeks of festivities (running past mid-February this year), so you have several chances to check out most of the events listed here. We’ve collected some of the city’s landmark parades and festivals, and a spread of newer markets, pop-ups, and dinners timed to the occasion.
Parades and Celebrations
Lan Su Chinese Garden
Various times and dates Jan 29–Feb 23 | Lan Su Chinese Garden, Free–$43
On Wednesday, January 29, the first of several ceremonial lion dances kicks off nearly a month of Lunar New Year celebrations at Lan Su Chinese Garden. In the upcoming weeks, check out calligraphy demos, family-friendly origami and woodblock print classes, and a run of performances from local dance and drumming groups, as well as martial arts performances.
Oregon Lunar New Year Gala
5–9pm Sat, Feb 1 | Keller Auditorium, $20–99
Three hundred performers make up the epic cast for this annual event put on by the best-named organization in the metro area, the Chinese Friendship Association of Portland. Lending a playful, variety-show air to the event, comedian and Chinese TV personality Joe Wong hosts the impressive lineup of mostly Chinese stagecraft, including music, dance, rhythmic gymnastics, and martial arts performances.
Tết Ât Tý with the Vietnamese Community of Oregon
10am–10pm Fri, Feb 7 | Leodis V. McDaniel High School, FREE
Celebrating the Vietnamese New Year, Tết Ât Tý, the Vietnamese Community of Oregon’s free festival is full of kid-friendly events, including live music and dance performances, traditional arts and crafts, and even a fashion show.
Washington Square Mall
11am–4pm Sat, Feb 8 | Summit Court at the Washington Square Mall, FREE
A wishing tree and the local mobile (that is, on wheels) children’s museum FLIP set the scene at this mall spectacular. Ten performances fill a tight five-hour window, including from the Portland Puppet Museum and the Portland Chinese School’s yo-yo team, capped with a lion dance from local company White Lotus.
Dragon Dance and Parade
10am–1pm Sat, Feb 8 | Portland Chinatown Museum, FREE
Each year, a 150-foot-long dragon, PoChiMu, promenades from the Portland Chinatown Museum across Downtown. Drummers, dancers, and spectators in tow, it wends south through the Chinatown Gate and down Third Avenue until landing, a mile and a right turn later, at the Oregon Historical Society.
Dinners and Food Events
New Year’s Tea with Doja Tea
11am–4pm Thu–Sun thru Feb 23 | Opal 28, $45
Tualatin’s classiest tea house, Doja Tea, is popping up in the city at event space Opal 28 through most of February to serve a reservation-only afternoon tea celebrating the Lunar New Year. The prix fixe menu of rice balls and shumai, and finger sandwiches with chili crisp and scallion ginger chicken salad, match the spread of teas drawn from across Asia—though there are still scones (rhymes with flans) and clotted cream to finish.
Tết at Kolectivo
6–10pm Fri, Jan 24 | Kolectivo, FREE
The trio behind Mémoir Cà phê—and Portland Cà Phê, HeyDay, and Matta—are teaming up with Annam VL, the newest soup spot from the Hà VL family, to throw a night market with snacks, drinks, local makers, and a DJ.
Growing Gardens at Mestizo
5 & 8pm Sun, Jan 26 | Mestizo, $200
The vegan chef Thuy Pham, of the much missed Vietnamese restaurant Mama Dút, and mixologist Nan Chaison, of Mestizo and Norah, are behind this pan-Asian and totally vegan benefit dinner for the local nonprofit Growing Gardens.
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