Lunar New Year Festival

A free annual celebration of Lunar New Year in Richardson's Chinatown neighborhood on Greenville Avenue.

Richardson has one of the most established Asian-American communities in the Dallas metro, a population that grew alongside the city's telecom corridor from the 1980s onward and has become a defining part of who Richardson is. The Lunar New Year Festival is a free annual celebration produced in Richardson's Chinatown neighborhood, at DFW Chinatown on Greenville Avenue, with programming that draws from Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Southeast Asian cultural traditions, including dragon and lion dances, K-pop dance performances, Japanese taiko drumming, and Chinese instrumental music. ESW handles full event production for the City of Richardson and the Dallas Chinese Community Center.

The Lunar New Year Festival is produced annually by the City of Richardson Parks & Recreation Department in partnership with The CORE District and the Dallas Chinese Community Center. It is held at DFW Chinatown, Richardson's Chinatown neighborhood at 400 N Greenville Avenue, which serves as the cultural anchor of the Asian-American community in the Dallas metro. The event is free and open to the public, with free parking and continuous shuttle service from the DART Arapaho Center Station. Programming spans multiple cultural traditions and includes live performances, 50 vendors including 21 specialty food and beverage vendors, and a Kids Zone. ESW manages full event operations, including site setup, vendor coordination, performance logistics, and day-of management, on behalf of the City.

Richardson's Asian-American community has deep roots in the city. The growth of the telecom industry along the US-75 corridor in the 1980s brought a significant wave of Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Southeast Asian professionals and their families to Richardson, and that community has shaped the city's culture and commercial life ever since, a history covered in detail by the Dallas Morning News. The CORE District, Richardson's redeveloped historic central area, includes a Chinatown neighborhood on Greenville Avenue that functions as the cultural and culinary center of the Asian-American community in the Dallas metro. The City of Richardson Parks & Recreation Department produces an extensive annual events calendar, and the Lunar New Year Festival is one of its most distinctive events, regularly featured in North Texas roundups of the season's best Lunar New Year celebrations. The 2026 edition, held February 15, 2026, celebrated the Year of the Horse.

Full event production for a multi-cultural festival on Greenville Avenue.

The Lunar New Year Festival takes place on Greenville Avenue in Richardson's Chinatown neighborhood, a public-facing commercial street that requires coordinating street access, vendor placement, and pedestrian flow across a busy day. ESW works closely with the City of Richardson Parks & Recreation team and the Dallas Chinese Community Center to manage all operational elements: site layout, vendor coordination, performance staging, transit logistics, and the Kids Zone. The 2026 program ran a tight four-hour schedule with 12 performances timed roughly every 15 to 20 minutes, from a morning music opener through the closing lion and dragon dance, which requires careful sequencing and day-of management to keep the event feeling organized and welcoming.