Festivals are woven into the rhythm of daily life in Thailand, shaped by the lunar calendar, the Buddhist Lent, and centuries of regional tradition. Below we have listed the major festivals taking place throughout the year, from the water fights of Songkran to the floating lanterns of Yi Peng. Contact our Discovery team to plan your journey around any of these dates.
Thailand Festivals 2026
Bo Sang Umbrella Festival
Date: Mid-January (third weekend)
Location: San Kamphaeng, near Chiang Mai
Duration: 2 days
The village of Bo Sang, famed for hand-painted saa paper umbrellas and fans, closes its main street for a weekend of craft demonstrations, a beauty pageant crowning the festival queen beneath a canopy of parasols, and a parade of floats built entirely from umbrellas. Workshops stay open to visitors keen to try the brushwork themselves, and the surrounding lanes fill with stalls selling northern Thai handicrafts alongside the umbrellas.
Chinese New Year
Date: Late January or February (varies with the lunar calendar)
Location: Bangkok’s Yaowarat and Phuket Old Town
Duration: 3 days
Thailand’s large Thai-Chinese community welcomes the new year with lion and dragon dances, firecrackers, and street kitchens frying noodles and roast duck long into the night. Yaowarat Road in Bangkok becomes one unbroken food market lit in red and gold, while Phuket’s Sino-Portuguese shophouse quarter runs its own parade through streets built by the same community it now celebrates.
Chiang Mai Flower Festival
Date: Early February
Location: Chiang Mai
Duration: 3 days
Chiang Mai’s cool-season peak brings the Flower Festival, when Buak Hat Park and the moat road fill with orchids, marigolds, and the Damask roses the region is known for. A Saturday parade of flower-covered floats winds from Nawarat Bridge to the park, trailed by marching bands and beauty queens, while nurseries across the province open their gates for the weekend.
Makha Bucha Day
Date: February or March, full moon of the third lunar month
Location: Nationwide
Duration: 1 day
One of Thailand’s most sacred Buddhist observances, marking the day 1,250 enlightened monks are said to have gathered spontaneously to hear the Buddha preach. Temples across the country hold candlelit processions after dark, with monks circling the ordination hall three times in silence, and the sale of alcohol is suspended nationwide for the day.
King Narai Reign Fair
Date: Mid-February
Location: Lopburi
Duration: 10 days
Lopburi’s old town, still ringed by the ruins of King Narai’s 17th-century palace, hosts a fair built around a nightly light-and-sound show staged inside the palace walls. Costumed processions recall the era when French and Persian envoys visited the Ayutthaya-period court, and the fairgrounds fill with an Isan-leaning night market of grilled skewers and sticky rice.
Songkran – Thai New Year Water Festival
Date: 13–15 April
Location: Nationwide, at its most exuberant in Chiang Mai
Duration: 3 days nationwide, up to a week in Chiang Mai
Thailand’s most famous festival marks the traditional new year with a nationwide water fight that spills into every street, moat, and pickup truck bed in the country. Beneath the splashing sits a gentler ritual: pouring scented water over the hands of parents and grandparents, bathing Buddha images, and releasing caged birds and fish for merit. Chiang Mai’s moat becomes the epicentre of the celebration, with a week of processions, beauty pageants, and sustained water combat along its banks.
Visakha Bucha Day
Date: May, full moon of the sixth lunar month
Location: Nationwide
Duration: 1 day
The holiest date on the Buddhist calendar, commemorating the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and passing, all said to have fallen on the same full moon. Candlelit processions circle temple grounds after dusk across the country, and the more elaborate ceremonies at Bangkok’s Wat Phra Kaew and Wat Benchamabophit draw visitors alongside the faithful.
Bun Bang Fai – The Rocket Festival
Date: 8–10 May 2026 (dates vary by year and village)
Location: Yasothon, Isan region
Duration: 3 days
Villages across Thailand’s northeast fire enormous bamboo and PVC rockets, some over nine metres long, into the sky to petition the rain god Phaya Thaen for a good rice season ahead of the monsoon. Yasothon runs the country’s largest gathering, with a Friday parade of decorated floats and dancers followed by two days of rocket launches, wagering, and good-natured heckling of any rocket that fails to fly.
Phi Ta Khon – The Ghost Festival
Date: 20–22 June 2026 (set annually by the village’s spirit mediums)
Location: Dan Sai, Loei province
Duration: 3 days
Dan Sai’s ghost festival opens with a merit-making ceremony inviting the spirit of the Mekong River to protect the town, but it is best known for its second day, when villagers parade through the streets in coconut-husk and rice-steamer masks representing playful spirits. The costumes, garish and homemade, are part exorcism and part carnival, giving way on the final day to sober Buddhist sermons that close the festival.
Asalha Bucha and the Ubon Ratchathani Candle Festival
Date: July, full moon of the eighth lunar month, with the candle procession the preceding weekend
Location: Ubon Ratchathani
Duration: 4–5 days
Asalha Bucha marks the Buddha’s first sermon and the start of Buddhist Lent, when monks retreat to their monasteries for the three-month rains retreat. Ubon Ratchathani marks the occasion with Thailand’s grandest candle festival: workshops across the province spend months carving beeswax into towering, temple-scale sculptures, paraded through the city on flatbed trucks before being presented to local temples.
Phuket Vegetarian Festival
Date: 10–18 October 2026 (ninth lunar month)
Location: Phuket Old Town
Duration: 9 days
For nine days, Phuket’s Chinese-Thai community observes strict vegetarian abstinence, and shophouses along the old town’s Sino-Portuguese streets mark participation with yellow flags. The festival is best known for its street processions, where entranced mediums pierce their cheeks with skewers, swords, and even branches, walking barefoot over hot coals and broken glass in acts of devotion said to carry bad luck away from the community.
Buffalo Racing Festival
Date: Late October
Location: Chonburi
Duration: 1 day, with several days of associated festivities
Held for well over a century, Chonburi’s buffalo races see local farmers strip the yokes from their working buffalo and ride them bareback down a straight, muddy track, traditionally run just before the buffalo return to the rice fields for ploughing. A parade, a buffalo beauty contest, and stalls selling the province’s noted seafood round out the week.
Ok Phansa and the Naga Fireball Festival
Date: Late October, full moon of the eleventh lunar month
Location: Nong Khai, along the Mekong River
Duration: 2 days
Ok Phansa marks the end of Buddhist Lent, when monks emerge from their three-month retreat and lay devotees offer new robes. Along the Mekong at Nong Khai, the evening carries an unexplained natural phenomenon: pinkish fireballs rising silently from the river, said locally to be breath from the naga serpent that guards its waters, drawing crowds to the riverbank after dark.
Chak Phra Festival
Date: Late October
Location: Surat Thani
Duration: 3 days
Surat Thani marks the end of Buddhist Lent by pulling Buddha images through town on decorated boats and wheeled floats, hauled by long ropes that any bystander is welcome to take hold of for merit. The Tapi River fills with a flotilla of temple boats for the occasion, accompanied by long-boat races and a riverside fair.
Surin Elephant Round-Up
Date: 19–21 November 2026
Location: Surin, Isan region
Duration: 3 days
Running annually since 1960, Surin’s Elephant Round-Up gathers over 200 elephants from the province’s Kui mahout villages for a weekend built around a Saturday morning feast, when the animals are laid a buffet of fruit, sugarcane, and vegetables stretching the length of a football pitch. The stadium show that follows recreates historic battle formations and elephant football, framed by a street parade and craft stalls through Surin town.
Loy Krathong
Date: 24 November 2026, full moon of the twelfth lunar month
Location: Nationwide, with the most photographed scenes on the rivers and moats of Sukhothai and Bangkok
Duration: 1 night, with several days of associated events in some cities
On the year’s most luminous night, small floats woven from banana leaves and folded into lotus shapes are set adrift on every river, canal, and pond in the country, each carrying a candle, incense, and a coin as an offering to the water spirits and an apology for the year’s pollution. Sukhothai Historical Park, birthplace of the tradition, stages the country’s most elaborate re-enactment among its 13th-century temple ruins.
Yi Peng Lantern Festival
Date: 24–25 November 2026
Location: Chiang Mai
Duration: 2 days
Held alongside Loy Krathong but distinct to the old Lanna kingdom of the north, Yi Peng sees thousands of khom loi, paper lanterns lit by a small candle and oil-soaked wick, released into the night sky in mass launches outside the city. The coordinated release at Mae Jo University is the festival’s best-known image, though the quieter, temple-organised launches around the old city moat draw considerably smaller crowds.
Chiang Rai Lantern Festival
Date: 25 November 2026
Location: Chiang Rai
Duration: 1 day
Chiang Rai runs its own lantern release the day after Yi Peng, centred on the Singha Park grounds, with a more curated, festival-style programme of live music and food stalls alongside the mass lantern launch. It draws a steadily growing crowd keen to combine the spectacle with the wider attractions of Chiang Rai’s temples and hill country.
Active Thailand
Amazing Thailand Marathon Bangkok
Date: 28–29 November 2026
Location: Bangkok
Bangkok’s flagship road race starts and finishes in the heart of the city, its course threading past the Grand Palace, Wat Arun, and the riverside districts before dawn breaks over the finish line. The marathon, half marathon, and shorter distances draw an international field and give visiting runners a rare, traffic-free view of the capital’s landmarks.
Laguna Phuket Marathon
Date: 13–14 June 2026
Location: Phuket
Run through the Laguna resort complex on Phuket’s Bang Tao Bay, this early-morning marathon takes advantage of the cooler pre-dawn hours before the tropical heat sets in, on a course that loops past lagoons, golf courses, and stretches of the island’s northwest coastline. Shorter distances and a kids’ run make it a workable addition to a family beach stay.
Chiang Mai Marathon
Date: 20 December 2026
Location: Chiang Mai
One of Thailand’s longest-running road races, the Chiang Mai Marathon starts beneath the old city’s Tha Phae Gate and climbs into the hills toward Doi Suthep before looping back through the moat road, giving runners a genuine taste of the temperature drop and mountain scenery that define the north’s cool season.
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