What are the main events and festivals in Phuket?

Phuket festivals play an essential role in island life. The history of Phuket goes back a long way, and the whole year is peppered with many traditional festivals or newly created events. Some are celebrated nationwide, while others have a special meaning to Phuket people. Not all the events are listed here yet, but we’ll add them as we join them.

1. Chinese New Year

When: January / February

Phuket Chinese New Year features several festivities to celebrate the Year of the Rat. With its large ethnic Chinese population descending from migrants to the island in the past, Phuket’s Lunar New Year festival is an important annual event. It seems to get bigger and more colourful with each passing year as the number of tourists from China arrives in larger numbers. The events mostly take place in the old streets of Phuket Town.

2. Laguna Phuket Marathon

When: June

The Supersports Laguna Phuket Marathon will take place this year on June 11 and 12, 2022, in Bang Tao Beach. Thousands of runners will arrive in Phuket from around the world and other parts of Thailand to compete in the event’s full marathon, half-marathon, 10.5km, 5km, and 2km kids runs. The Laguna Phuket Marathon will showcase Phuket’s post-pandemic revival and some of the island’s most scenic locations. The race starts and finishes at Laguna Grove, taking runners past small villages, rubber and pineapple plantations, and through the beautiful beachfront Sirinat National Park.

3. Songkran Festival

When: April

What is this Songkran Festival everyone is talking about lately? If you choose to come to Phuket or Thailand in April, you’d better know what Songkran is about. Songkran is the Thai New Year when the sun moves from Pisces to Aries. What started long ago as a small family event where people poured some scented water on the shoulder of a small Buddha statue turned into enormous water fights in the streets of most cities in the country. In most places, the water fight lasts one day, but in Bangla Walking Street can stretch up to three days, especially at night.

5. Phuket Vegetarian Festival

When: October/November

The Phuket Vegetarian Festival is usually held between October to November each year. This festival happens annually during the ninth lunar month and is one of the island’s most auspicious events. Crowds of devotees will assemble in all the Chinese shrines on the island, followed by a horde of photographs to get a photo of their life.

6. New Year’s Eve

When: December

New Year is a day like no other, and this is the place to be! Phuket is a party all year round, so you can expect some serious events around the island. Every hotel will have a gala dinner with some poolside entertainment, and main beaches will see fireworks: places where people party all year round will have to deliver something even more significant, a party you will never forget. Nightclubs and Beach clubs will blast the countdown, and the party will be wild all night long. This is the night you want to remember!

7. Wat Chalong Fair

Wat Chalong (Chalong Temple) Fair is probably the biggest of all temple fairs on the island. It was first started in 1933 by local farmers who lived near Wat Chalong. After a long period of hard work and when the harvest was complete, they would get together and create a fair on the temple’s grounds. In later years, they set up the fair during the Chinese New Year because they wanted to make sure that Thais with Chinese heritage would join in, too. The fair lasts 7 days each year and is a colourful, crowded, aromatic, noisy but fascinating spectacle.

8. Phuket Old Town Festival

Phuket’s Old Town Festival takes place in the historical centre of the Old Town, along Thalang, Krabi, and Phuket roads. During the festival, the roads around the Old Town are turned into walking streets. There’s so much to do during this festival, including a Baba Light Show and cultural parades

9. Thao Thepkasattri-Thao Sri Suntorn Festival

This festival has a strong historical connection to the island and lately has been promoted as one of the most important events in Phuket. The fair lasts many days and largely consists of sporting and cultural experiences.

10. Por Tor Festival (Hungry Ghost Festival)

The Hungry Ghost Festival is an important merit-making event for the ethnic Chinese. Special food, flowers and candles are offered to ancestors on altars.  Other offerings are made to ‘feed the ghosts without relatives’ that are said to have been released from hell for the month.

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