The Auckland Lantern Festival is one of the city's most beloved free events and a major celebration of Chinese New Year in Tāmaki Makaurau. Held annually at the Auckland Domain, it draws hundreds of thousands of visitors over its four-night run with hundreds of illuminated lanterns, cultural performances, food stalls and family activities that light up the park in spectacular fashion.
The festival is a vibrant expression of Auckland's Chinese community and the city's broader multicultural identity. Visitors can walk through large-scale lantern displays crafted in a variety of traditional and contemporary designs, watch lion dances, martial arts demonstrations, and stage performances, and sample a wide range of food from across the Asia-Pacific region. The atmosphere on the Domain lawns after dark is one of the most distinctive in Auckland's annual events calendar.
Free to attend and open to everyone, the Auckland Lantern Festival has become a genuine city institution. For visitors exploring Auckland in late summer, it offers a rare opportunity to experience a major cultural celebration in one of the city's most beautiful parkland settings, with the warmth and welcome that characterises Auckland's Pacific and Asian communities.