If last year was about shedding old habits, this one is about picking up speed. The Year of the Fire Horse signals action, momentum, endurance, and straight-ahead clarity. A good reminder to move with purpose and trust your instincts before everything feels perfectly mapped out.

You can feel that energy in how this month unfolds: Lunar New Year officially lands on February 17, but events spill out across the days and weeks before and after. So here’s your list. Stack a workshop with dinner. Pair a parade with a film screening and finish the day with a late drink. Lunar New Year 2026 is moving fast. Go with it…

DINE | Bao Bei hosts an annual Lunar New Year family table that somehow still has a few seats left (at time of writing, miracles do happen). If you’ve never done Bao Bei for Lunar New Year, this is the moment. Bring a small crew, sit down properly, and let the kitchen take over. This year’s multi-course spread is focused on seafood – which will show up in dumplings, noodles, and plenty more, built around Chinese traditions and good local ingredients, with drinks flowing alongside. It’s generous, loud in the best way. On February 17, lion dancers arrive at 7:30pm, which is exactly as fun as it sounds. Book the late seating if you want the full show. Trust us. These folks know what they’re doing. Reservations required. DETAILS

CREATE | Vancouver artist Justine Crawford leads a guided painting session paired with a tasting from Haywire Winery. Work through a Year of the Horse-inspired motif (lanterns, florals, moon elements) and leave with something for your wall. DETAILS

BAKE | Learn to make classic almond and walnut New Year cookies with Yu Teng Ong in a hands-on session that keeps things practical and social. These crisp, buttery staples show up on tables every Lunar New Year for a reason: they travel well, keep well, and signal abundance without trying too hard. Expect flour on your sleeves, steady conversation, and a few good stories shared while trays cycle through the oven. DETAILS

COOK | Abraham Wong leads a focused evening on savoury radish pudding, a Lunar New Year essential rooted in Cantonese home cooking. Using mostly local ingredients, you’ll work through the full process, learn where the dish comes from, and why it still matters in Chinese Canadian kitchens today. Each participant takes home a full tray. This is slow, generous cooking with context, not a rushed demo. DETAILS

GATHER | Get yourself to Chinatown for the 52nd Chinese New Year parade on Sunday, February 22nd. This year, you can expect to be vying for viewing space with anywhere between 100,000-150,000+ other enthusiastic parade-goers… so arrive early to claim your piece of sidewalk! The parade starts at 11am at the Millennium Gate, travelling east along Pender, before turning south onto Gore, then west onto Keefer, and ending at the Abbott intersection. Be sure to wear a nice and thick red (lucky-coloured) sweater, and bring along a hot drink to keep your hands warm. DETAILS

FOLD | A quiet, focused counterpoint to parade-day noise, this Year of the Horse origami workshop invites you to slow down and work with your hands for a couple of hours. Hosted at Ocean Artworks on Granville Island, the session is led by Aiko Matsushiba, who learned the craft from her grandmother and has spent years sharing its possibilities. You’ll choose your paper, learn classic folds, and build animal forms that reward patience and attention. Just paper, process, and a small reset in the middle of a busy weekend. It’s mentally grounding, genuinely creative, and open to all ages. DETAILS

WATCH | As spectators, we rarely stop to think about the years of rehearsal, coordination, and pressure behind a parade that seems to glide past in an afternoon. Spring After Spring pulls back that curtain. Directed by Jon Chiang, it follows the legacy of Maria Mimie Ho, the longtime force behind the Strathcona Chinese Dance Company and a founding architect of Vancouver’s Lunar New Year Spring Festival. Through archival footage, rehearsal-room moments, and reflections from her daughters, the film traces what it takes to carry a cultural tradition forward when the person who built it is gone. Earlier screenings sold out quickly. This showing still has seats and screens right after the parade itself. DETAILS

TREAT | Beaucoup Bakery is marking the Year of the Horse with a dim sum–inspired pastry lineup that includes a Nian Gao Pop Tart with peanut butter and vanilla cream, a pork floss and scallion croissant with kewpie and melted cheese, a garlic shrimp croissant finished with yuzu jam, and a kabocha egg tart built on laminated pastry. There’s also a sharp cookie box (salted egg yolk snowballs, peanut puffs, lotus sablé spirals) and a pandan-durian celebration cake layered with jasmine ganache and coconut streusel. Damn: nice work, Beaucoup! DETAILS

SIP | Fairmont Hotel Vancouver brings back its Lunar New Year Afternoon Tea with a Year of the Horse edition that blends classic service with smart, culturally grounded details. Served at Notch8 Restaurant & Bar, the menu moves from Jasmine Earl Grey scones and Szechuan-glazed prawn toast to char siu–inspired salmon with yuzu, sesame miso biscuits, mandarin sago pudding, and gold-finished pastries for good fortune. On Lunar New Year Day, a lion dance runs through the lobby and restaurant. Book ahead. $75 adult / $40 child. Reservations recommended. DETAILS

CULTURE | Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden marks the Year of the Fire Horse with a two-day Lunar New Year weekend built around hands-on culture, food demos, and live performance. Saturday focuses on process and participation, with tea ceremonies, calligraphy, lantern viewing, and nian gao (LNY cake) tastings. Sunday shifts into full festival mode with comfort-food vendors, sugar candy art, dumpling demos, music and dance performances, fortune telling, and a lion dance. DETAILS

FEAST | Say Hey Cafe & Deli is teaming up Dicky’s Dumps for a one-day Lunar New Year pop-up built for parade pacing: warm, filling, and easy to eat between lion dances and sidewalk stakeouts. The collab menu includes lucky dumplings from Dicky’s (chicken & ginger or veg), as well as crispy chicken leg with ginger-scallion oil, Hong Kong–style rice rolls with sweet and sesame sauces, hot-and-sour “many fortunes” soup, sesame chilli celeriac and nashi pear salad, and White Rabbit coconut buns. There will also be brown sugar ginger tea with longan and red date, plus hot melon milk tea. Serious food. DETAILS

CHEERS | A shift in cosmic energy is what the world needs right now. Raise a glass to the speed, courage, and momentum of the Year of the Horse. The Keefer has dropped a Lunar New Year cocktail lineup that comes with its own mission statement: “Eight drinks. No reins. Yeehaw!” Which feels about right. Each drink channels a different Horse mood, from polished to proudly unruly. Standouts include Man o’ War, a fruity, tangy, creamy number powered by mezcal and a lot of attitude. As The Keefer explains: “Named for the famously stubborn American thoroughbred who did things strictly on his own terms. Brilliant, unbeatable, and crystal-clear about boundaries. Ask nicely and he’d deliver greatness; try to force it and you were already losing. When we wondered if mezcal would work with mango sticky rice, we took a Man O’ War approach and made it happen.” There’s also Northern Dancer, served hot and named after the first Canadian-born horse to win the Kentucky Derby, and the boldly playful, happily out-of-line Pink Pony Club (Ford’s gin, bamboo liqueur, Fernet-Branca, strawberry secret beauty tea, lemon, hojicha milk clarified). Strawberry secret beauty tea? Yes, please. Absolutely. Check the full list here: DETAILS

LEARN |  Love dumplings enough to wonder if you should learn how to make them yourself? Good news: Dicky’s Dumps is teaming up with our pals at Bad Academy for a hands-on Lunar New Year dumpling workshop at Funk Coffee Bar. This is a focused, practical session built around repetition, technique, and learning the skills you’ll actually use at home. You’ll work through pork-and-cabbage filling from start to finish, practise multiple folding styles, and leave with freezer-ready dumplings you made yourself. The class is paired with a custom LNY cocktail or mocktail designed to suit what’s on the table.
Tickets are $125 and include the workshop, one specialty drink, and approximately two dozen dumplings to take home. Vegetarian option available with advance notice. DETAILS

CLEAN | Chinese tradition holds that thoroughly cleaning your home prior to New Year’s Day sweeps away any bad luck from the past year, so spend a little time cleaning up your digs. Once the elbow grease has been applied and everything is in tip-top shape (dust bunnies banished and fridges sparkling), there will be lots of room for good luck to settle in.  IMPORTANT: Cleaning on New Year’s Day is considered a bad idea because you could be sweeping away all the good fortune that will see you through the year ahead. So…Monday, February 16th: Clean / Tuesday, February 27th: Don’t clean. Once everything is sorted on the home front, take yourself out for a nice dinner somewhere. We like Pizza Coming Soon and Bao Bei in Chinatown, Longs Noodle House in Richmond, or Dinesty on Robson, but choose your own adventure.  On a budget (who isn’t these days?), we frequently refer to this list of some of the best dumplings in town.