About FestivalAtlas
Building the world's authoritative source for authentic cultural celebrations
The Problem That Started It All
I'm a traveler who's genuinely curious about different countries. I throw myself into places and take whatever I encounter as my experience. But this approach has a critical flaw.
Brunei: I seriously had no idea when to go or what to expect. I would have seen nice streets and palaces - but I'd never see those palaces in use. I would have missed the Sultan's birthday, when the entire nation comes alive and those empty palaces become centers of celebration. I would have considered myself as having "visited Brunei" - but according to me, that's not really visiting it at all.
Dubrovnik: I went during summer season. It was terrible. I met not a single Croatian except the cleaner lady at my hostel. Everything was about Game of Thrones. That's not traveling - that's being part of a tourist machine. There's a festival for the patron saint of the city that happens outside summer season. That's probably the right time to go to really understand what Dubrovnik actually is.
This kept happening. I'd arrive places a week too late, leave days too early, or spend months somewhere and never know what locals actually celebrate. The world operates on hidden cultural calendars - lunar dates, harvest cycles, saint days that locals anticipate all year.
I wanted a solution. A calendar that tells me when these festivals happen so I can plan accordingly. When to go to a place. Where to be at the right time.
Our Vision
To become the global cultural authority - the institution every traveler trusts to reveal what humanity actually celebrates. A world where FestivalAtlas is to cultural celebrations what National Geographic is to exploration, what Michelin is to dining, what IMDb is to film.
What Makes Us Different
Authoritative, Not Crowd-sourced
We don't rely on user submissions. Our AI research system discovers festivals through deep research, verifies them through multiple sources, and maintains current dates through intelligent monitoring. Clean, reliable data you can trust.
Complete Country Coverage
Travelers explore countries, so we surface every country first. Behind the scenes we map the cultural focus areas inside them—Bavaria versus Berlin, Rajasthan versus Kerala—so no localized celebration slips through. You get a natural country view with the depth of our internal focus-area research.
Built for Travelers, Not Tourists
We don't promote events trying to attract visitors. We document what's already happening. If locals don't participate, we don't include it. If it's manufactured for tourists, it's not in our database. Every festival must pass our 5-Point Community Test.
Dual Discovery: Time and Place
Unlike any other platform, we understand that 50% of modern travelers are flexible about where they go. We're the only cultural calendar that lets you explore both ways: browse by destination if you know where you're going, or browse by date if you want to discover where amazing things are happening.
Current Status
13,741
Festivals Documented
Authentic cultural celebrations
1,042
Cultural Regions
Distinct cultural areas mapped
209
Countries & Territories
Growing coverage globally
Our Core Principles
Authenticity over Marketing
We document what is, not what wants to be promoted. Every festival must be authentic to local culture.
Cultural Truth over Quantity
We don't chase festival count. We document every celebration that reveals cultural identity, regardless of size.
Authority over Community
We provide researched facts, not user opinions. Like IMDb for film or Michelin for dining - a trusted reference, not a review platform.
Respect over Tourism
We help travelers participate respectfully, not disruptively. Cultural preservation matters more than visitor convenience.
Why This Matters
Every year, millions of culturally curious travelers visit places and miss their essence. They see the infrastructure but miss the soul. They photograph buildings but miss the moments when those buildings come alive with local celebration.
FestivalAtlas ensures you're in the right place at the right time to experience what actually matters to the people who live there. We're not just building a database - we're establishing the definitive source that future generations will reference to understand how humanity celebrated.
Building the Solution
In 2025, the technology of deep research AI came into existence. I realized: I can simply deep research every possible one of these festivals, maintain them in a database, and build services that keep their dates, times, and venues current. Help myself and others get to the right places at the right times.
Challenge 1: Modern Borders Don't Match Cultural Reality
Political borders don't represent cultural reality correctly. I couldn't just stop at country lines. I had to step back and ask AI: "What are the distinct cultural focus areas inside each country?" Bavaria is different from Berlin. Rajasthan is different from Kerala. That's how we mapped 1,042 focus areas across 209 countries while keeping the app country-first for travelers.
Challenge 2: Discovering Unknown Unknowns
How do you uncover all festivals inside each focus area? I developed 3-round deep research per area—pushing AI to its limits to find any missing festivals. It won't reach 100% coverage (some festivals aren't well documented online), but it surfaces the meaningful celebrations travelers care about.
Challenge 3: The World is Messy
Different festivals operate differently - lunar calendars, harvest cycles, fixed dates. There's no way to calculate and anticipate them all. So I built FPDM (Festival Practical Data Maintenance) - a system that understands when to check each festival's confirmed dates, just like a human research team would, but automated. When someone looks up Chile, they get the most up-to-date answer without going anywhere else to confirm.
Challenge 4: Cultural Evolution
New festivals emerge. Others get cancelled. Every few years local identities shift. That's when I created the Evolution service—it refreshes festivals inside each focus area periodically so our country-level view stays alive and accurate.
I'm Solving My Own Problem First
FestivalAtlas is built by someone who lives this problem - a traveler who kept missing the soul of places because I didn't know when to be there. The research infrastructure is operational. The database is growing. Now I'm building the interface that will help me and others truly see the best of the world.
Join Us
If you share our vision of more meaningful travel - experiencing places through their authentic celebrations rather than tourist infrastructure - we'd love to hear from you.