Chiang Mai
The Chiang Mai Lantern Festival: Three Things People Book by Mistake
Loy Krathong falls on Tuesday 24 November 2026 and Yi Peng runs around it. The photograph everyone has seen is usually a third thing, a ticketed mass release on a different date, and the gap between those three is where most disappointment comes from.
More people are disappointed by this festival than by anything else in Thailand, and it is almost never because the festival is bad. It is because three different events share a name in most people’s heads, and the one they booked is not the one in the photograph they saw.
The date
Loy Krathong 2026 falls on Tuesday 24 November. Yi Peng runs around the same full moon, generally spread across the days either side, with the main public nights in Chiang Mai on and around that date.
The date is not fixed to the calendar. Loy Krathong is the full moon of the twelfth month of the Thai lunar year, which lands in November most years and moves by a fortnight or more between them: it was 5 November in 2025 and is 13 November in 2027. We checked 24 November two ways, against the published festival table and against the astronomical full moon, which falls at 15:23 Bangkok time that day. Confirm it yourself before booking anything you cannot change, because a page can go stale and a lunar calendar does not care.
The three things
Loy Krathong is the national one and it happens on water. A krathong is a small float, traditionally banana leaf, with a candle, incense and a few coins, set onto a river or a pond as an offering and a letting-go of the past year. It happens across the whole country. In Chiang Mai the river and the moat fill with them, and it is quiet, local and genuinely lovely.
Yi Peng is the Lanna festival and it happens in the air. Paper sky lanterns, khom loi, are released into the night. It coincides with Loy Krathong and is specific to the north, which is why Chiang Mai is the place people travel for. There are free public releases at temples and along the river, and the city is decorated for several days.
The mass release is the third thing, and it is a commercial event. The images of a thousand lanterns going up together, in a field, in perfect unison, come from ticketed private gatherings held outside the city, typically at a temple ground or an event site, on their own dates that may not overlap with the public festival at all. They are expensive, they sell out months ahead, and they are the reason a lot of people arrive in Chiang Mai on the right night for the wrong event.
None of these is a scam and none of them is the “real” one. But they are three different purchases, and knowing which you want is the entire planning problem.
Is it safe to fly a lantern
This is the most-asked question about the festival and it deserves a straight answer rather than a reassuring one.
A sky lantern is an open flame inside a paper shell, released into the dark, that then travels wherever the wind takes it and comes down still warm. That is the whole design. Thailand restricts where and when they may be released precisely because of it, and the restrictions are real rather than decorative: releases are permitted in designated areas and within designated windows, and the rules tighten in years when conditions are dry.
The aviation part is the one that will affect your trip whether or not you release anything. Chiang Mai’s airport sits close to the city, and every year the authorities publish restricted periods around the festival during which flights are limited, rescheduled or suspended. Airlines move their timetables to fit. If you are flying in or out on or around 24 November 2026, check your flight time again in the weeks beforehand and do not book a tight connection.
The environmental side is less dramatic and worth a sentence. Lanterns come down somewhere: in fields, in trees, in water. Frames made of wire rather than bamboo are the ones that do lasting harm to livestock and to farmland, and the better organised releases use biodegradable ones. If you buy from a street stall, that is worth asking about.
Our position, for what it is worth: release one if you want to, at an organised venue, inside the permitted window, with a bamboo frame. Do not launch one from a hotel balcony or a riverbank because everyone else is.
Planning around it
Book the room first. These are the busiest nights of the Chiang Mai year. Accommodation inside the old city goes months ahead and reaches its annual peak price. Flights are the more flexible half of the trip; the room is not.
Give it more than one night. The festival is spread across several days and the best of it, the small temple releases and the krathongs on the water, is not concentrated into one evening. A two-night visit built around a single date is the version most likely to disappoint.
The weather is on your side. Late November is the start of the best stretch of the Chiang Mai year: dry, cool, and before the burning season. Rainfall averages 32mm for the month against 276mm in August, and nights are around 19C, which is the pleasant end of the year here rather than the hot one. Our weather page has the full year.
Then stay for the city. If you have come this far for two nights of lanterns, the old city temples, a cooking class and Doi Suthep are all within reach of the same base. Things to do covers what fills the rest of the week, and where to stay covers the base itself.
What we cannot tell you
Which specific ticketed events will run in 2026, what they will cost, or where. Those are announced by their organisers on their own schedule, usually later in the year, and they change. We are not going to guess at them, and a page that did would be wrong by the time you read it.
What we can tell you is the date the moon does its part: Tuesday 24 November 2026.
The Chiang Mai Lantern Festival: Three Things People Book by Mistake FAQs
When is the Chiang Mai lantern festival in 2026?+
Loy Krathong falls on the full moon of the twelfth lunar month, which in 2026 is Tuesday 24 November. Yi Peng, the northern sky-lantern festival, runs around the same full moon, usually across the days either side. The date moves every year with the lunar calendar, so confirm it against a current source before booking anything non-refundable.
What is the difference between Loy Krathong and Yi Peng?+
Loy Krathong is national and happens on water: small decorated floats, krathong, are set onto rivers and ponds across Thailand. Yi Peng is Lanna, meaning northern, and happens in the air: paper sky lanterns released into the night. They fall at the same time and in Chiang Mai you see both, which is why the two names get used interchangeably even though they are different festivals.
Is the mass lantern release included in the festival?+
No, and this is the single most common mistake. The photographs of thousands of lanterns rising in unison are almost always from a ticketed private event held outside the city, on its own date, at a price that surprises people. The city's own festival is free, spread over several nights, and looks nothing like that photograph.
Is it safe to fly a sky lantern in Chiang Mai?+
It is an open flame attached to a paper bag that you then lose control of, so it is not risk-free, and Thailand restricts where and when releases may happen for that reason. Release only at an organised venue inside a permitted window, never near the airport, and expect flights to be rescheduled around the festival: the airport publishes restricted periods every year and airlines move schedules to fit them.
Do you need to book Chiang Mai far ahead for the lantern festival?+
Yes. It is the busiest few nights of the Chiang Mai year, accommodation in the old city goes months ahead, and prices reach their annual peak. If your dates are fixed to the festival, book the room before the flight, because the room is the scarcer thing.