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Mid-Autumn Festival London 2026: Dates, Events & Where to Buy Mooncakes
Updated: Sep 28
Mid-Autumn Festival 2026 falls on Friday, 25 September. It is the same date across most of East and Southeast Asia, but it goes by different names and looks different depending on whose family you grew up in. This page covers what the festival is, how it is marked in Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese households, what is happening in London this year, and where to buy mooncakes before they sell out. We update it every year.
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When is Mid-Autumn Festival 2026?
Friday 25 September 2026. The date moves each year because it follows the lunar calendar: the festival lands on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, when the moon is at its fullest and brightest.
In practice, London events cluster across the whole of September rather than the day itself. The two biggest fall on the weekend of 5–6 September, three weeks before the festival proper.
What is the Mid-Autumn Festival?
It started as a harvest festival, roughly 3,000 years ago, and became a celebration of reunion. The full moon is round, and the word for round in Chinese carries the sense of completeness and family togetherness. That is the whole idea in one image: everyone under the same moon, ideally in the same room.
The moon legend most people know is Chang’e, who drank an elixir of immortality and floated up to live on the moon, with a rabbit for company. Versions of that rabbit turn up across the region.
The same festival, four names
Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋節)
Mooncakes and family dinners. The classic mooncake is a dense pastry filled with lotus seed paste and one or two salted egg yolks, the yolk standing in for the moon. London bakeries now do custard lava, snowskin, matcha and everything else, but the lotus and yolk version is the traditional one.
The table matters as much as the mooncake. Roast duck, hairy crab with ginger and vinegar, taro for luck, lotus root for family bonds, pomelo, and osmanthus wine, which is drunk now because osmanthus flowers in autumn.
Vietnamese Tết Trung Thu
In Vietnam this is largely a children’s festival. Kids carry star-shaped lanterns through the streets, lion dance troupes go door to door, and the mooncakes come in two styles: bánh nướng (baked, golden) and bánh dẻo (soft, chewy, made from glutinous rice flour and eaten unbaked). If you have only ever had the Chinese kind, bánh dẻo is worth seeking out.
Korean Chuseok (추석)
Chuseok is closer to Thanksgiving than to a moon festival. It is a three-day national holiday in Korea, 24–26 September in 2026, when people travel home, visit family graves and hold charye ancestral rites. The food to look for is songpyeon, half-moon rice cakes steamed over pine needles and filled with sesame, chestnut or bean paste.
Japanese Tsukimi (月見)
Literally moon-viewing, and the quietest of the four. No big gatherings, just displays of susuki pampas grass and stacks of tsukimi dango, plain white rice dumplings piled into a pyramid. In Japan the shape people see in the moon is a rabbit pounding rice cakes, which is why rabbits appear on everything around now.
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Mid-Autumn events in London 2026
Confirmed so far, soonest first. We add more as they’re announced, so check our events page closer to the date.
London Mid-Autumn Fair 倫敦中秋聚 — 5–6 September, Goldsmiths, New Cross. The biggest one. A two-day fair with 80+ stalls a day of street food, mooncakes and independent makers, plus lantern riddles, lucky draws and cultural workshops. Free entry, family-friendly. See the listing
ESEA Culture Festival: Autumn Moon Festival — Saturday 5 September, Ancient Market Place, Kingston. A free all-day festival from the Korean British Cultural Exchange: live performances, martial arts, K-pop, hanbok try-on, kimchi tasting and street food. See the listing
celebrASIA at Battersea Power Station — 11–13 September. A free three-day festival of Southeast Asian food, music, art and workshops. Not a Mid-Autumn event as such, but it lands in the run-up and is the biggest free ESEA thing this month. See the listing
East Asian Market at Canary Wharf — 12–13 September. 40+ stalls, free entry. Good for lanterns and mooncakes in one trip. See the listing
Dear Asia: Mooncake Tasting & Lantern Making — Tuesday 22 September, Aldgate. A short evening workshop covering the moon legends, mooncakes with tea, and a lantern to take home. Book on Eventbrite
Mid Autumn Festival — Lễ Hội Trung Thu — Sunday 27 September, Deptford Lounge. The free annual Vietnamese Trung Thu run by Vietnamese Family Partnership, with lion dance, mooncakes and children’s activities. The most family-friendly one on this list. See the listing
Chinatown does not usually run a single ticketed Mid-Autumn event. What happens instead is that the whole area shifts: lanterns go up, bakery windows fill with mooncakes, and restaurants put on seasonal menus. Turning up and walking around is the event.
Where to buy mooncakes in London
Two routes: supermarkets and bakeries for boxes to take home, or restaurants for the fancy gift sets. Restaurant boxes usually open for pre-order in late August and sell out, so order early if you want a specific one.
Chinatown supermarkets and bakeries
See Woo — Lisle Street. The biggest mooncake selection in Chinatown each season, from budget boxes to gift tins.
Loon Fung — Gerrard Street plus four other London branches. Serving the community since 1965 and reliable for mooncakes every year.
New Loon Moon — Gerrard Street. Smaller, but punches above its weight on the mooncake shelf.
Chinatown Bakery — Newport Place. Freshly baked rather than boxed.
Golden Gate Cake Shop — Macclesfield Street. Going since the 1960s and still one of the best in London for lotus seed paste with salted egg yolk.
Tian Tian Market — multiple branches. Stocks HK Maxim and other imported brands each season.
Restaurant and bakery gift boxes
These change every year, but the same names tend to do a box. Worth checking each of them from late August:
Bun House — Lisle Street. Cantonese motifs on every cake, usually a mix of lava custard, red bean and pistachio.
Mille — Paddington. The most experimental: black truffle lava, snowskin, pineapple pastry, and a savoury pork pie mooncake that reappears most years.
Shanghai Supper Club — Marylebone. Shanghainese-style with a flaky crust and pork filling, which is a different thing entirely from the Cantonese kind.
Xi Home — Blossom Street. Lava boxes, and they usually run mooncake-making classes alongside.
Imperial Treasure — Waterloo Place. Mini salted egg yolk custard, at the high end.
Mimi Mei Fair — Mayfair. Gilded gift boxes, made for giving rather than eating on the sofa.
Matchado — Chiswick, Acton and King’s Cross. Matcha-infused skin, for the non-traditionalists.
How to celebrate if you can’t get to an event
Buy one box, share it. Mooncakes are extremely rich. They are cut into quarters and passed round for a reason.
Eat outside if the sky is clear. Moon-viewing is the whole point and London gets maybe one clear night in five at that time of year.
Call the family. For most people in the diaspora this is the part that actually matters. The festival is about reunion, and a video call counts.
Make songpyeon or tsukimi dango. Both are glutinous rice flour and water. Much easier than mooncakes, which need moulds, golden syrup and a week of resting.
FAQ
When is Mid-Autumn Festival 2026? Friday 25 September 2026. Chuseok runs 24–26 September as a three-day Korean holiday.
Why does the date change every year? It follows the lunar calendar, not the Gregorian one. The festival is always the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, which drifts between early September and early October.
Is Mid-Autumn Festival the same as the Lantern Festival? No. Lanterns appear at both, but the Lantern Festival is in the first lunar month, fifteen days after Lunar New Year. Mid-Autumn is the eighth lunar month.
Where can I buy mooncakes at short notice? Chinatown supermarkets carry boxes right up to the day. Restaurant gift sets need pre-ordering, usually weeks ahead.
Are the London events free? The Vietnamese Trung Thu at Deptford Lounge, celebrASIA and the Canary Wharf market are all free. Workshops and restaurant dinners are ticketed.
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