National Mahjong Day – Apr. 30, 2027

Expected National Mahjong Day Deals

While we await official 2027 promotions, history shows that retailers often offer discounts on Mahjong sets, accessories, and instructional books. Look for deals from major online retailers like Amazon and Target, as well as specialty game stores such as GameStop and Barnes & Noble. Brands like Yellow Mountain Imports and Mahjong Time may feature special bundles or digital game access. We will update this page with confirmed live deals as April 30 approaches.

History of National Mahjong Day

Mahjong is based on card games popular in China in the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Khanhoo and Pènghú, which are mahjong’s most likely ancestors. They’ve been compared with the western card games Conquian and Rummy, as they all involve drawing and discarding cards to make melds. Nobody is sure when the conversion from cards to tiles happened, but it’s estimated to have happened in the middle of the 19th century. The earliest surviving tilesets date from around 1870 and were found in Fuzhou, Shangai, and Ningbo. These sets were different from the ones used today in several ways — some tiles were missing and some were placed differently, others shared the titles of the leaders of the Taiping Rebellion. (It’s believed that they were removed after the rebellion ended.)

On October 1, 1949, the People’s Republic of China was founded. One of their new laws was a ban on gambling, which resulted in a decline in the game. The game became altogether illegal during the Cultural Revolution of 1966. The ban wasn’t lifted until 1985. Nowadays, the game has become a favorite pastime in China.

In the West, the first records about Mahjong come from the papers of British Consul General F. E. B. Harvey, from when he served as consul in Ningbo, in the 1860s. He became an acquaintance of an English-fluent official under the Daoguang Emperor, who taught him the game. He then described the rules of the game in a series of papers.

In 1920, Mahjong sets began to be imported to the U.S., and it became a fad for the rest of the decade. It became a central part of cultural bonding for Chinese Americans in the 1920s and ’30s, in Chinatown, Manhattan, and was part of community building for suburban American Jewish women in the 1940s and ’50s. Mahjong nights in America often involved dressing and decorating rooms in Chinese style. The rules of the American variant became standardized with the formation of the National Mah Jongg League in 1937. In 1986, the N.M.J.L. conducted its first Mah Jongg Cruise Tournament. In 1999, a second organization was formed, the American Mah Jongg Association, which currently hosts tournaments all across North America.

How Businesses Can Celebrate National Mahjong Day