The video of a large crowd releasing balloons during New Year celebrations in China is shared as the one from 2025 Prayagraj Maha Kumbh
The Maha Kumbh Mela, which began on 13 January 2025 in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, has attracted devotees from across the globe (here and here). Amid this, a video going viral on social media (here, here, and here) shows a large crowd simultaneously releasing balloons into the sky. The post claims it is from the 2025 Prayagraj Maha Kumbh Mela. Let’s verify the claim made in the post through this article.
Claim: The video shows a large crowd simultaneously releasing balloons into the sky at the 2025 Prayagraj Maha Kumbh.
Fact: The viral video is not from the 2025 Prayagraj Maha Kumbh. It depicts New Year celebrations in Nanchang, China, as stated by multiple YouTube channels from Chinese accounts. Additional videos of the same event, captured from different angles, were found on the Chinese website Xigua Video, confirming the location as Zhongshan Road, Nanchang. The video is unrelated to India. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
To verify the viral claim, we searched the internet using relevant keywords but found no reports confirming a balloon release event at the 2025 Prayagraj Maha Kumbh.
Upon closely reviewing the viral video, we noticed Chinese text displayed on a large screen. Using the Google Lens translate feature, we found that the text translates to “New Year.”
We conducted a reverse image search of the keyframes from the viral video, which led us to a Facebook post (archived) dated 01 January 2025, featuring the same video captioned “Happy New Year from China #China.”
We came across multiple YouTube videos uploaded from Chinese accounts, claiming that the videos were from the New Year celebrations in Nanchang, China. (here, here, here, and here).
We also found several videos of the same event from different angles on the Chinese website Xigua Video.
The location was identified as Zhongshan Road, Nanchang, China. A comparison can be seen below.
To sum up, the video of a large crowd releasing balloons during New Year celebrations in China is shared as the one from 2025 Prayagraj Maha Kumbh.