Drop everything: the 2026 Pocket Chinese Almanac is here!

The traditional Chinese almanac is a centuries-old repository of cultural information, from household tips to general medical remedies. Authors Joanna C. Lee and Ken Smith translate and decode the almanac's predictions with daily listings for 2026, the Year of the Horse.

This year's cover

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Hong Kong International Film Festival, this year's cover features a pantheon of Hong Kong movie legends. Included are Chow Yun Fat (A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Tony Leung (Internal Affairs, In the Mood for Love, Hero), Stephen Chow (Kung Fu Hustle, Shaolin Soccer), and many more.

The cover is also dedicated to the Lunar New Year film, a uniquely Hong Kong tradition. The equivalent of Hollywood summer blockbusters, Hong Kong's New Year films have marked holiday family outings for decades.

About the cover artist

Alex Chan worked nearly 30 years as an art director, producer, and designer before immersing himself in Cantonese pop culture. Steeped in childhood memories of his film-loving family, he launched his Facebook page "fanartbyalexchan" in February 2017, and his distinctive digital drawings attracted widespread attention and acclaim.

His nostalgia-tinged artwork for the almanac's cover honors Yuen Dai Yung, a former textile worker and self-taught "posterist" responsible for creating hundreds of Hong Kong's iconic movie illustrations.

Tucked among Chan's portraits are samples of Hong Kong street food, an integral part of the artist's childhood movie-going experiences. "Every time you walked past a cinema, you could smell the snacks outside even from 100 meters away," he says. "Those smells still trigger great memories, though they're hard to find now."

Learn even more about this year's almanac.