Never Miss a Country's Soul
Festival dates you can trust, for wherever you are or plan to be
I went to Dubrovnik during summer. It was terrible. I met not a single Croatian except the cleaner at my hostel. Everything was Game of Thrones. There's a festival for the patron saint of the city that happens outside summer season. That's when Dubrovnik comes alive.
This kept happening. Brunei — I would have visited and seen empty palaces, never knowing that the Sultan's birthday turns the whole nation into a celebration. I would have "visited Brunei" but never actually experienced it.
The world operates on hidden cultural calendars — lunar dates, harvest cycles, saint days that locals anticipate all year. FestivalAtlas exists so you don't have to guess. When to go. Where to be. What's actually happening when you arrive.
What You Get
Dates reliable enough to book flights around
We verify from official sources so you can plan €500 trips with confidence
Celebrations you'd never find on Google
Hidden local festivals, not tourist attractions or music festivals
Lunar, harvest, and variable dates handled for you
Islamic, Chinese, Hindu calendars — we do the calculations
Why Our Dates Are Reliable
Multiple source verification
Every date comes from official sources — city councils, cultural ministries, and organizers — not user submissions or outdated web scrapes.
Continuous monitoring
When festivals announce new dates, we catch it within days — not months. No more arriving a week late because a website was outdated.
Not crowd-sourced
We don't rely on random user submissions. Our research team verifies each festival before it goes live.
Our 5-Point Authenticity Test
Every festival must pass all five criteria before we include it:
Local participation — Residents actually attend, not just tourists
Recurring tradition — Happens on the community calendar, not a one-off event
Cultural meaning — Connected to local identity, religion, or tradition
Not manufactured — Would exist without visitor marketing or tourism boards
Verifiable — We can confirm details through primary research sources
Our Vision
FestivalAtlas is building the institution travellers trust to reveal what humanity actually celebrates — not what trends online, and not what’s easiest to market.
Think: what National Geographic is to exploration, what Michelin is to dining, what IMDb is to film — but for cultural calendars and peak moments.
Our north star is simple: help you be in the right place at the right time to experience a place at its prime — with dates reliable enough to plan around.
Roadmap
We ship continuously. Here’s what we’re focused on next:
- • Expand verified coverage and keep dates fresh through continuous monitoring.
- • Make discovery faster: better “where/when” guidance, fewer clicks, smoother exploration.
- • Improve planning: trips, calendar exports, and reminders that make it easy to act on a date.
- • Build the Field Guide program so festival media stays current, respectful, and real.
For deeper details on membership, see Membership. To contribute, see the Field Guide Program.
Who Built This
FestivalAtlas was built by a traveler who kept missing the soul of places. I'd arrive a week too late, leave days too early, or spend months somewhere and never know what locals actually celebrate. This is the calendar I wish existed. Now it does.
Ready to Travel When Places Are Most Alive?
Start exploring festivals happening around the world — and plan your next trip around something real.