Explore verdict: who does the best Lunar New Year celebrations - Sydney or Melbourne?

Both cities will welcome the Year of the Horse with gusto, but where should you saddle up for the boldest, noisiest ride? Our experts help you decide.

Amy Cooper: Why the Harbour City - home to Australia's largest Chinatown - is the winner.

I like the vibes around the year of the fire horse: freedom, vitality, excitement, boldness, speed. Basically, it's a Ferrari logo. Such an occasion calls for peak prancing, and only one Aussie city has the thoroughbred pedigree. Ignore any nagging from neigh-sayer Mal - for the friskiest zodiac animal, show-pony Sydney is your mane event.

One of the world's biggest Lunar New Year celebrations outside Asia fills February with citywide spectacle. Before you've even exited the airport, you'll be offered free fortune cookies (mornings, February 16-22) and invited to clip clop snap a souvenir pic at T1 International's House of the Horse photobooth.

In Australia's largest Chinatown, Haymarket's streets and shops will fizz with lanterns, lion dances, street food stalls, makers' markets and live performances radiating out from Dixon and Hay streets into neighbouring Darling Harbour, where the show hits the water with dragon boat races and lion dancers on jet packs. You can horse around in the Chinese Garden of Friendship, one of the few of its kind outside China, with music, zodiac readings, painting workshops, tea ceremonies and tastings, plus a night party (February 20) with DJs, kung fu and fan dancing.

You can horse around in the Chinese Garden of Friendship, one of the few of its kind outside China, with music, zodiac readings, painting workshops, tea ceremonies and tastings, plus a night party (20 Feb) with DJs, kung fu and fan dancing. There's even a free Lunar Extravaganza concert at Centennial Hall on 21 Feb, with a cultural cornucopia of Chinese, Korean, Thai, Japanese and Vietnamese talent.

While you might think wild horses couldn't drag you away from all that CBD fun, Sydney's no one-horse town. The party gallops across a galaxy of satellite Chinatowns and Asian communities. Paramatta is channelling the entire east into the city's west in its biggest-yet program of pan-Asian festivities, from karaoke to cosplay, wishing trees and the god of wealth, and a Boronia Park feast starring celebrity chefs like MasterChef's Therese Lum and Sarah Tiong.

In Chatswood, the north shore's Chinatown, you can eat like a horse at 130-plus food stalls amid a two-day street party crowning a month's cultural calendar where calligraphy, comedy and C-pop all cohabitate. Burwood, just named Australia's coolest neighbourhood (and #16 globally) by Time Out, is also the country's fifth most diverse community. Celebrations, centred around neon-drenched Burwood Chinatown between February 12-21, draw more than 50,000 revellers. In Cabramatta, where the Pai Lau archway commemorates the local south-east Asian communities, a massive party will unfold on February 28. Or you can hoof it to Hurstville, Eastwood or Ashfield for even more.

Whether you bag a banquet at cult Canto joint the Lucky Prawn in inner-west Bob Hawke's Brewery, dumplings and mahjong at the Ace Hotel's Loam or afternoon tea with duck bao sliders at The Fullerton Hotel, Sydney's lunar levity just keeps mounting up.

Why the long face, Mal? Maybe it's because Melbourne just can't match Sydney's horsepower.

Mal Chenu: Why the Victorian capital stands a dragon's head and shoulders above Sydney.

The eyes of the world were on Melbourne for two weeks as it staged the prelude to Married at First Sight, and the racquet show cemented its reputation as Australia's primo events city. And when it comes to ringing in the Lunar New Year, Melbourne stands a dragon's head and shoulders above Sydney. In Melbourne, the mooncakes are yummier, the lanterns more colourful, the firecrackers noisier and the red envelopes fatter.

Billions of people celebrate Lunar New Year - most commonly associated with China - throughout Asia and the Middle East. In Australia, as the snake slithers away and the Year of the Horse gallops in, attention and appetites turn to Melbourne's Chinatown. The 2026 Lunar New Year Festival transforms Little Bourke Street, Russell Street and surrounds into a vivid spectacle of parades, performances, food stalls, and lion and dragon dances. You can sample a Fenjiu cocktail at the Spiegel Haus lookout, get fitted for UNIQLO style and investigate your zodiac at Emporium Melbourne's House of Luck.

In the 'burbs, check out Vietnamese-themed Tet festivals in Footscray, Braybrook and Sunshine, where a "Fastest Pho" eating challenge promises slurpy merriment.

Chinese heritage in Victoria dates back to the gold rush and Ballarat's Chinese community takes centre-stage with a concert in Wendouree, and at various Sino- celebrations at Sovereign Hill. In Bendigo, the Dai Gum San (Big Gold Mountain) precinct will host the revelry, centred on the giant lotus flower sculpture, Joss House Temple and Golden Dragon Museum, home to the 125-metre long Dai Gum Loong (Big Gold Dragon) and its 7000 hand-embroidered and painted scales.

The only problem with celebrating Lunar New Year is that an hour later you feel like celebrating it again, but until Bunnings puts soy sauce and Sichuan peppercorns on their snags, Melbourne remains the most Aussie place to paint the town Chinese red.