Hong Kong Events - May 2027
What May 2027 is like in Mong Kok
May is the month Hong Kong's wet season arrives properly. The Observatory's 1991–2020 normals for May give a mean temperature of 26.3 °C, a mean daily maximum of 28.8 °C and 290.6 mm of rain across the month, with an average of just 0.27 days under a tropical-cyclone warning signal No. 1 or above — the lowest of the May-to-September run. Read together, those numbers say the thing that decides a May market visit is rain, not heat: 26–29 °C is comfortable in the evening, so the sensible shape for the day is something indoors through the afternoon and Tung Choi Street in the evening rather than a morning start.
May 2027 carries two general holidays, Labour Day on Saturday 1 May and the Birthday of the Buddha on Thursday 13 May — more than August, September or November 2027 carry.
Dates confirmed for May 2027
Labour Day — Saturday 1 May 2027
General holiday, citywide. The first of the two. Because it falls on a Saturday, the holiday weekend and the market's fullest evening of the week are the same evening; if you would rather have the same three days with one less layer of crowd, come on the Friday evening before it and treat Saturday as the day for everything else in the district.
Source: GovHK — General holidays 2027 (gazetted list).
Birthday of the Buddha — Thursday 13 May 2027
General holiday, temples citywide. The date is fixed by the lunar calendar, not by anyone's announcement: the fourth lunar month began on 6 May 2027 and the festival falls on its eighth day, which the Observatory's conversion table puts at Thursday 13 May. The Government's gazetted holiday list agrees, which is two independent official sources for the same date.
Bathing-the-Buddha ceremonies run through the morning at Buddhist temples across the city, so the practical order for the day is temple first, market second: the street is quietest while the ceremonies are on and fills again from mid-afternoon.
Sources: GovHK — General holidays 2027 · Hong Kong Observatory — Gregorian–Lunar conversion table 2027.
Cheung Chau Bun Festival — main day Thursday 13 May 2027
Main day confirmed; wider programme not published. The festival's main day is tied to the same gazetted holiday, so Thursday 13 May is the day to plan around — and the day is all this page will print. The organiser has published no 2027 festival window and no programme, so the days either side of it, the parade times and the midnight events are left off rather than guessed at.
It is the one Hong Kong festival that still feels like a village running it for itself, and it is a ferry trip from Kowloon rather than a walk from the market — a half-day at best, so pick it or the market, not both.
Source: the main day derives from the gazetted Buddha's Birthday (see the two sources above); the organiser's 2027 programme was unpublished when this page was checked.
Still to be confirmed
French May Arts Festival. No 2027 dates or programme have been published. The organiser's own site carried the 2026 edition, which ran from April to July 2026, so a May overlap is likely — but a pattern is not a date, and this page will not print one until frenchmay.com posts it.
Classes and workshops
Daily tai chi with the resident master — Cordis, Hong Kong
9–10am, poolside on Level 42 at 555 Shanghai Street, a few minutes' walk from the market. Read the small print before you plan around it: it is complimentary for in-house hotel guests only, and it needs booking in advance on (852) 3552 3510. It is a reason to choose a Mong Kok hotel, not a class you can buy a place in.
Source: cordishotels.com — daily tai chi class.
LCSD district recreation programmes — Yau Tsim Mong
The Leisure and Cultural Services Department runs tai chi and sports courses year-round through its district leisure-services offices, and some of them are free. Fees are set per programme and the list is seasonal, so check the current one at lcsd.gov.hk rather than relying on a figure printed here.
Cantonese cooking and pastry courses — Hong Kong New Oriental Culinary Art
Small-group Cantonese and pastry courses in certificate and masterclass formats. The school is at 93 King's Road, North Point — on Hong Kong Island, not in Mong Kok — and its own site lists fees in the HK$5,500–6,800 range depending on the format, so budget a day for it rather than an afternoon.
Source: hknoc.com.hk.
Before you go
Ladies Market trades from 12:00 to 23:00 daily and closes only on the first day of Chinese New Year, so a May holiday changes the crowd on the street rather than the hours of the stalls. Getting there, what things cost and where to eat are each on their own page: opening hours, how to get to the market and the 2027 price guide.
How to keep up
May 2027 is about six months out from this page's last check, so the entries above are dated only where a source dates them. The listings that move first are the Hong Kong Tourism Board's events pages, the LCSD programme list, Time Out Hong Kong, and the organiser's own page for anything that sells tickets. This page was last checked on 26 October 2026.
Confirmed vs expected: Labour Day (Saturday 1 May) and the Birthday of the Buddha (Thursday 13 May) are gazetted 2027 general holidays, the second with two independent official sources for its lunar date, and the Cheung Chau festival's main day follows the second of them; the festival's wider programme, French May's 2027 dates and the temple-by-temple ceremony schedule are all unpublished, so none of them appears here as a dated entry.