Everyone Floats Something Down the River, and Nobody Explains Why
Loy Krathong is 24 November 2026 and Chiang Mai's Yi Peng lantern release runs the following two nights. The dates, what the mass release costs, why your flights may move, and what is illegal.
Loy Krathong is on Tuesday 24 November 2026. Chiang Mai's Yi Peng lantern festival runs 24 and 25 November 2026, with the city's own programme running 24 to 26 November. If you are thinking of going, those are the dates to book against, and rooms in Chiang Mai go first for exactly those two nights.
The reason to write them at all is that this festival is one of the few in Asia where the date genuinely moves, and a page that refuses to commit to a date is not being cautious — it is just not competing. So here they are, confirmed, with the practical consequences attached.
Last verified 10 October 2026.
The 2026 dates at a glance
Loy Krathong is the national one, on the full moon of the 12th lunar month: Tuesday 24 November 2026. Some sources still list 25 November; the full moon itself is on the 24th and that is the night everything happens nationwide.
Yi Peng is the northern sky lantern festival, and in Chiang Mai it runs 23 to 25 November 2026, with the two ticketed mass releases on the nights of the 24th and 25th. The grand krathong procession through the Old City is on the 25th.
The Tourism Authority's official Chiang Mai programme runs 24 to 26 November, including the krathong float on the Ping River in front of the city hall on the evening of the 26th, with fireworks at roughly half seven and half past nine.
And Sukhothai runs its own, for ten nights, from 15 to 24 November 2026, at the Historical Park. More on that below, because it is the better trip for most people.
What is actually being celebrated
Loy Krathong is a festival of water. The word literally means "a light in the water", and the krathong is a floating vessel carrying a light. On the evening of the festival the whole country turns up at a river holding a small bowl made from a banana-leaf stalk, a candle, a flower, a coin, a stick of incense and a pinch of somebody's hair, sets it on the water, makes a small bow, and lets it go.
The date comes from the 12th month of the Thai lunar calendar, which is why it drifts roughly eleven days earlier on the Gregorian calendar each year. It landed on 5 November in 2025 and it is on 13 November in 2027. In 2026 it is the 24th.
The point of the ritual is to shed something. The most widely told story is about a goddess on the middle Ganges and the king of the Naga serpent reviving a lost shell for her father. Both versions end the same way: you float away what has been unlucky and do not carry it into the rest of the year. The festival is older than the Buddhist association it now carries and it is a water festival first.
The celery is not a garnish. A stalk of Chinese celery trimmed with a stalk of sugarcane into a decorative shape, set into the krathong, decoration with no other function.
Yi Peng, which is what Chiang Mai is actually famous for
Yi Peng is a Lanna festival rather than a national one, celebrated by the northern Thai people, and it is the release of paper sky lanterns. In the north the two run together; in Bangkok and the south, Loy Krathong is the event and the full moon is a quieter occasion.
The lanterns are a genuine open-flame fire released from a controlled field, which is why the location is announced locally and why the release is ticketed rather than something you turn up and join.
The thing that will actually ruin your trip: flights
Chiang Mai International adjusts, delays and cancels flights around 24 and 25 November, and imposes an evening curfew on the festival nights. Thousands of open-flame lanterns going up near an airport is an aviation problem, and the airport treats it as one.
If you are flying in or out of Chiang Mai that week, build the slack into the itinerary before you book anything, and check the status with your airline in the days before you travel. A tight connection built on the assumption of a normal scheduleboard is the single most expensive mistake people make with this festival, and it is entirely avoidable.
Where to actually stand, and what it costs
The mass lantern releases — the ones where thousands go up at once — are ticketed, and they are outside the city. The largest is CAD's Khomloy festival at the CAD Cultural Center Lanna in Mae On district, on both 24 and 25 November. Tiers run from about ฿4,900 to around ฿15,900 and include transport from the city, a Lanna dinner and a couple of lanterns; the release is around twenty past eight.
They were already showing out of stock in October, and the full-moon night sells out before the second night does. Several sites claim to be the official ticket seller at slightly different prices and the booking platforms resell the same tickets at a markup, so compare the price for the same tier and night and check what the refund terms are before you pay.
The free version is genuinely good and almost nobody outside the country knows about it. Krathongs go down the Ping at Nawarat Bridge and on the moat, the Iron Bridge area is similar and less crowded, and the Old City has riverside stalls. That is Loy Krathong, it is free, and it is the actual local version of the night.
The rules, which people genuinely get in trouble for
Releasing sky lanterns inside Chiang Mai city limits and near the airport is illegal. It carries fines and in bad cases jail time, and authorities have designated no-lantern and no-firework zones across multiple districts. The releases you have seen in photographs are the licensed ones at the ticketed fields, and nobody legal is doing it from a bridge.
Do not float bread or foam krathongs. Authorities have been explicit that bread and polystyrene should be kept out of the water — the festival's own downstream is where the problem becomes visible, and the Chao Phraya carries the rest of it. Float natural materials.
Do not stand in the river, do not throw anything back in, and do not step on a krathong that has gone past you. There is a clearance operation afterwards, and the things are full of candle and fire and people do get burned.
Or skip Chiang Mai and go to Sukhothai
Sukhothai runs its festival at the Historical Park from 15 to 24 November 2026, which is ten nights instead of two, spread across the old temple ruins rather than concentrated into one crush. It is free to attend, it is the version most Thais actually go to, and the light-and-sound show in the park is the one thing worth booking ahead.
It is also, bluntly, the better trip for most people. The Chiang Mai version is the famous one and it is also two nights of several hundred thousand people, at festival prices, with the flight schedule under pressure. Sukhothai is the same festival at a volume you can actually walk around in.
What not to do
Do not plan to cross a bridge in Chiang Mai on the night. The crowds are genuinely enormous in a way that makes Songkran look relaxed.
Do not be somewhere with a view of the water on one night and expect lanterns from the same spot. They are different festivals on different nights and the views do not overlap.
And do not turn up on the night. The rooms, the tickets and the buses are all sorted weeks ahead of this one. Everything above is true precisely because it is confirmed in advance — which is the argument for writing the date down ten months early.
