Celebrate Chinese New Year Island-Style at Avani+ Fares Maldives

There’s something wonderfully freeing about celebrating Chinese New Year with your feet in the sand. In the heart of Baa Atoll, Avani+ Fares Maldives invites guests to a three-day programme to welcome the year with meaningful rituals, playful creativity, and wrapped in the easy rhythm of the Maldives. 

Running from Monday 16 to Wednesday 18 February 2026, the celebration is crafted to feel both festive and effortless: sunrise wellness for fresh intentions, hands-on moments for younger guests, teen-friendly traditions, evening entertainment that ends exactly how it should—by the sea, under the stars. 

The festivities begin with a wellness reset, Fire Flow, a Fire Horse-inspired yoga session designed to spark strength, confidence, and vitality. It’s the kind of start that makes you feel lighter, clearer, and ready for the year ahead.

From there, the energy turns delightfully hands-on. Kids can join in creating a handprint dragon a colourful symbol of strength and unity—while teens craft a lucky fish, a nod to abundance and prosperity. The celebration naturally spills outdoors: a family kite moment where the sky becomes part of the experience. 

Then comes the glamour. The resort’s Chinese New Year gala is framed as a night of festive flavours, cultural tradition, and fiery performances—staged beachside, where everything feels a little more cinematic. 

The following day keeps things light and social—designed for families who want tradition without formality. There’s a paper firecracker garland activity for kids, a red envelope exchange for teens, and lantern bowling for everyone who loves a little friendly competition.

And if you’re craving a Maldives-only plot twist, you can head out on Dolphin Quest—a splash of adventure that makes the celebration feel even more “only here.” 

The finale is all about warm, easy togetherness: sensory play for little ones, zodiac charades for teens, and a family high tea that adds a calm cultural pause to the festivities.  Then the island turns up the colour one last time with a dragon parade through the resort pathways, joyful, bright, and exactly the kind of moment everyone pulls their phone out for.

If you’d rather end on something unmistakably local, there’s also sunset fishing—a simple, classic Maldivian experience to close the celebration with salt air and golden light. 

For the wellness lovers, the resort’s spa combines a Mandarin Essential Oil Massage with a scrub, built around mandarin’s symbolism of luck, prosperity, and abundance, and finished with an in-house prepared exfoliating scrub tied to the resort’s sustainability initiative.

Find the full brochure here.