Steam Releases "Official" Lunar New Year Sale for 2026... With a Slight Caveat

A few years ago, Valve officially retired the yearly Lunar New Year sale, saying that it didn't strategically fit within the calendar of sales. It made sense, of course — the Winter Sale all but drained player wallets, making it impossible to justify another purchase (or ten) whenever the new sale came around.

While it was sad to see it retired at the time, we did get the Steam Spring Sale to replace it, which features right around the same amount of content as we've come to expect from major seasonal events. It's further spread apart, making more sense for day-to-day users who have limited spending opportunities, especially after the holidays.

However, this year, there's a new Steam Lunar New Year Sale... though not exactly in the way we've come to know and expect. In fact, as it stands, Steam is still celebrating Valentine's Day with the PvP Fest as the only official sale of the bunch... but it certainly isn't the only one.

While doing research for the Steam third-party sales of the week, a new sale caught my attention: Lunar New Year 2026. It's not within the usual bounds of a third-party event, with hundreds of games at a discount from various publishers. Further research led me to find out the reason why this unique sale was bespoke.

You see, a few years ago, Steam released an official SteamChina client, which allows the region to play titles without needing to jump through hoops, such as downloading VPNs, to access some elements. While SteamChina is still a more limited version of the client, it offers hassle-free browsing for regionally-approved content, all the while leaving Steam global available for those who don't mind the hoops.

This third-party event is hosted by Steam China, which is the official website for the region, operated by Perfect World (who had previously been handling Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and DOTA 2 servers for Steam). This means that, for all intents and purposes, in one way or another, the Lunar New Year sale is back for 2026.

The sale started on the 12th of February and will run until the 26th of February, featuring 478 products available for purchase and plenty of new historical lows for players to enjoy. The sale even comes with its own share of Points Shop items, including a whole Lunar New Year 2026 Special Profile for the Year of the Horse! If you're interested, don't miss out on the Lunar New Year deals for 2026, officially supported by Steam again!

...Sorta.