Celebrate Lunar is Central Florida’s premier Lunar New Year festival — and the flagship program of Heritage & Hope. What started in 2022 as a partnership with local high school Asian American clubs has become a downtown Orlando tradition that draws thousands of families every January, and a stage where Asian American students lead, perform, and are seen by their whole city.
More Than One Day a Year
For most of the people who walk through the gates, Celebrate Lunar is a day of lion dances, food from a dozen kitchens, and kids with red envelopes. For Heritage & Hope, it is the largest classroom we have.
The festival was built with high school Asian American clubs from across Central Florida, and those students are still at the center of it. They perform on the main stage, run booths, compete, volunteer, and watch adults who look like them being celebrated in the middle of their own city. The work our team does the rest of the year — club visits, leadership workshops, mentorship with Asian American professionals — grows out of the relationships that start here.
It matters commercially, too. Every year the festival puts dozens of small, often family-run Asian-owned businesses in front of thousands of new customers in a single afternoon, and ticket sales go back into Heritage & Hope’s youth programming.
The Festival by the Numbers
7,000+
attendees at the most recent festival
~2,000
new attendees added, on average, each year
40+
food and product vendors, most of them local
20+
performing groups on stage each year
[ XX ]
high school Asian American clubs involved since 2022
[ XX ]
student performers and volunteers to date
[ $XX ]
returned to students, clubs and community partners
How It Grew
Five years, three venues, and a lot of lion dancers.
2022 · YEAR ONE
A festival built with students, not just for them
The first Celebrate Lunar was created in partnership with local high school Asian American clubs. The idea was simple and, at the time, untested: Central Florida’s Asian American community deserved a Lunar New Year celebration of its own scale, and the students who kept those cultures alive in their schools deserved a stage bigger than a cafeteria.
2023 · LAKE NONA
Roughly 3,800 people showed up
The second year drew about 3,800 attendees to Lake Nona — enough to prove the demand was real, and enough to make it clear the festival had outgrown a suburban field. Performers, food vendors and community groups came from across the region.
2024 · DOWNTOWN ORLANDO
The move to Luminary Green Park
On February 24, 2024, the third annual festival opened in Luminary Green Park in Downtown Orlando’s Creative Village — a public park, in the center of the city, with more than 7,000 people expected. More than 40 performers took the stage across lion dancing, K-pop, taiko drumming, martial arts and classical Chinese dance. A portion of ticket sales went to Chair the Love, a wheelchair charity, with the donation presented live at the festival.
2025 · TWO DAYS
One day was no longer enough
For its fourth year, January 18–19, 2025, Celebrate Lunar expanded to a two-day festival for the first time, again drawing more than 7,000 friends and neighbors to Downtown Orlando — and giving student groups and local performers twice the stage time.
2026 · FIVE YEARS IN
The Year of the Horse and a fifth anniversary
The fifth anniversary festival lands on Saturday, January 31, 2026 at Luminary Green Park: more than 20 performing groups, 40+ food and product vendors, a children’s carnival, and Dynasty of Dance — the hip-hop dance battle that runs into the evening and has become one of the festival’s biggest draws for teens. Food spans Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Filipino, Japanese, Thai and Cambodian kitchens.
What the Festival Leaves Behind
Students who have led something real
High school club members don’t just attend — they choreograph, rehearse, recruit, run booths and compete. A teenager who has organized a performance in front of 7,000 people carries that into college applications, interviews, and everything after.
Small businesses in front of thousands
More than 40 food and product vendors — many of them family-run and Asian-owned — meet thousands of new customers in a single day. For a small kitchen or a first-year maker, that is a year’s worth of marketing in an afternoon.
A community that takes up public space
Holding the festival in a downtown park, not a rented hall, changes what it means. Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Filipino, Japanese, Thai and Cambodian families share one stage in the middle of Orlando, and everyone else is invited in.
Moments from the Festival
A lawn full of neighbors, a stage that runs all day, and forty-odd kitchens and makers doing the best business of their year.
“[ FOUNDER QUOTE — a few sentences from Maxine on why the festival exists and what it has meant to see it grow. ]”
Maxine Sudarma
Founder, Heritage & Hope
Coming to this year's festival?
Dates, tickets, vendor applications, performer sign-ups and the full lineup all live on the festival’s own site.