In Kuching the festival has a texture you will not find on the peninsula. This is a city where Malay, Chinese, Iban, and Bidayuh families have lived next door for generations, so an open house here is genuinely mixed, and non-Muslims, expats included, are welcomed at the door rather than tolerated. For the wider calendar this sits inside, our guide to festivals in Sarawak maps out the whole year.

TL;DR: Hari Raya in Kuching

• When: Saturday, 21 March 2026, with Sunday, 22 March as the second public holiday. The federal government also gazetted Friday, 20 March as an additional holiday, making it a long weekend. Islamic dates are set by moon-sighting and are confirmed a day or two before.
• What it is: Hari Raya Aidilfitri, the Malay Muslim celebration that ends the Ramadan fasting month, also called Eid al-Fitr.
• Open houses: Families hold open houses where anyone, including non-Muslim friends, neighbours, and expats, can drop in to eat. You usually need to be invited or come with someone who was.
• What closes: Many shops, eateries, and offices shut for several days, and the streets empty as people go home to their kampung.
• The food: Ketupat, rendang, lemang, and trays of kuih raya are the markers of the day.
• Honest note: For the first few days the city runs at half speed or less, so do not arrive expecting normal service.

When is Hari Raya in 2026?

Hari Raya Aidilfitri 2026 fell on Saturday, 21 March, with Sunday, 22 March as the second day, both gazetted as public holidays in Malaysia. The federal government also declared Friday, 20 March an additional holiday, which turned the celebration into a four-day long weekend. The reason the exact day is only fixed late is the Islamic calendar. It is lunar, so Ramadan ends and Aidilfitri begins only when the new moon of the month of Syawal is sighted, and Malaysia’s authorities announce the confirmed date the evening before.

In practice the country waits. The confirmation follows the moon-sighting (rukyah) reports and is announced on national television the evening before. If you are reading this ahead of a future Raya, work to the estimated date and stay flexible by a day until the announcement. The federal public-holiday calendar published by the Malaysian government is where the official Aidilfitri date is gazetted, and it is what our Sarawak public holidays guide tracks for the full year.

What is Hari Raya Aidilfitri?

Hari Raya Aidilfitri is the festival that ends Ramadan, the month when Muslims fast from dawn to dusk. “Hari Raya” means “day of celebration” in Malay, and “Aidilfitri” is the Malay form of Eid al-Fitr, the festival of breaking the fast. After a month of fasting, the day itself is about gratitude, forgiveness, and family.

The morning begins with Aidilfitri prayers at the mosque, men and many women in their best baju Melayu and baju kurung. After prayers comes a custom that defines the day: the younger generation asks forgiveness of their elders, often kneeling to seek maaf zahir dan batin, forgiveness for any wrong in word or deed over the past year. Then the eating and the open houses begin and run for days. The festival is religious at its core, but the celebration pulls in the whole neighbourhood.

What are open houses, and can expats go?

An open house (rumah terbuka) is exactly what it sounds like: a family opens their home and lays out food for anyone who comes by. You walk in, greet the hosts, eat, sit a while, and move on to the next one. During Raya, Malay families across Kuching hold them, and so do companies and community groups on a larger scale.

Here is the part that surprises newcomers. In Kuching the open house is genuinely cross-cultural, and non-Muslims are welcomed without fuss. Expats, Chinese neighbours, Dayak colleagues, all turn up, and every host I have met has seemed glad of it. My first Raya here, an Iban colleague brought me along to her Malay friend’s open house in Petra Jaya, and I spent an hour being fed rendang by an auntie I had never met who kept refilling my plate before it was empty. I was made up, as we’d say back in Manchester, properly pleased. I had braced myself to feel like an intruder. I felt like a guest.

A few things make the visit go well:

• Wait for an invitation, or come with someone who has one. Open houses are open, but you do not wander into a stranger’s home off the street. A colleague or neighbour saying “come to ours” is the green light.
• Dress modestly. Cover shoulders and knees. Traditional dress is welcome but not expected.
• Take your shoes off at the door, the same as entering any home here.
• Eat something. Accepting food is the whole point. Even a small plate is a compliment to the host.
• Greet with “Selamat Hari Raya”. Adding “maaf zahir dan batin” to a Muslim host you know is a warm touch.

What is balik kampung?

Balik kampung means “return to the village”, and it is the annual homecoming that empties Malaysia’s cities at Raya. People who have moved to Kuching, or from Kuching to Kuala Lumpur, travel back to their family home for the holidays. It is the single biggest movement of people in the Malaysian year.

In Kuching the exodus runs two ways. City-dwelling Malay families drive out to kampung in places like Lundu and Asajaya, while Sarawakians working in the peninsula fly home, filling every Kuching-bound flight for the week. The roads out of town clog the day before Raya, and then the city itself goes quiet, because so many of the people who run its shops and stalls have gone home too.

What is open and what is closed during Raya?

This is the practical question that catches visitors out, so here is the honest split. Expect most Malay-run businesses, and a good share of others, to shut from the eve of Raya through the first few days.

A few real consequences. Grab keeps running but with fewer drivers and longer waits, especially the day before Raya when everyone is travelling. Some Chinese-run coffee shops stay open and become the reliable place for a meal, the mirror image of how Malay eateries stay open during Chinese New Year in Kuching. If you take regular medication or want fresh produce, buy it before the eve, because the wet markets thin out for the best part of a week.

Here is the downside I am not going to soften: for several days around Hari Raya, much of Kuching simply shuts down, shops, eateries, and offices close, and the streets go quiet from balik kampung, so arriving as a tourist expecting full services is a real mistake. This is not a minor inconvenience you can route around. The city you read about, the one that runs on cheap hawker food at every corner, is largely switched off, and no amount of planning brings those closed stalls back for the days they are gone.

What food do people eat at Hari Raya?

A handful of dishes signal that it is Raya and not any other day:

• Ketupat. Rice steamed inside woven palm-leaf pouches into firm, diamond-shaped cakes, sliced and eaten with everything. The woven ketupat shape is the symbol of the festival, on every Raya decoration.
• Rendang. Beef or chicken slow-cooked in coconut milk and spices until the sauce dries down and the meat goes tender and dark. The dish people travel across town for.
• Lemang. Glutinous rice and coconut milk cooked inside a bamboo tube over a fire. It pairs with rendang and with serunding, a sweet meat floss.
• Kuih raya. The cookies and small sweets, pineapple tarts, kuih makmur, suji, that fill the containers on every Raya table.
• Satay and laksa. Many hosts add favourites alongside the classics, so do not be surprised by a pot of Sarawak laksa at a Kuching open house.

Most of this is cooked over the days before Raya, and the first plate someone hands you is rarely the last.

How does Raya in Kuching feel different from the peninsula?

The difference is the mix. In a peninsular city, Raya can feel like a Malay festival everyone else observes from the outside. In Kuching, where no single group is the whole story, it reads more like a neighbourhood occasion that happens to be Malay-hosted. The same diversity that shapes Gawai Dayak in June shapes Raya in spring.

You see it in the guest list. A Malay open house in Kuching will have Chinese and Dayak friends in the room, and the same families turn up at each other’s celebrations through the year, Raya, then Gawai, then Chinese New Year. The reciprocity is real and lived, not staged for visitors. The conversations switch between Malay, English, and whatever dialect the table shares. It is a quieter, more domestic festival than a parade, and that intimacy is the point.

How should you plan around Hari Raya in Kuching?

Treat it as a planned slowdown, not a normal week. The visitors who struggle are the ones who assumed the city would run as usual.

• Confirm the date close to the time. Raya 2026 landed on 21 March; for any future year, check the official announcement, which comes a day or two before.
• Stock up before the eve. Food, cash, medication. Assume your usual stall is closed for several days.
• Find your fallback meals. Note which malls and Chinese-run shops near you stay open.
• Say yes to any open-house invitation. It is how you see Raya from the inside rather than from the closed shopfronts, and the invitation is genuinely meant.
• Book travel early. Flights and the better lodges fill up fast, and roads out of town are heavy the day before.

If you are visiting rather than living here, the kindest advice is to come a few days after Raya rather than during it, when the stalls are back open and the city has filled up again.

Where to start

If Raya 2026 is on your radar, do one concrete thing now: tell the Malay colleagues or neighbours you already know that you would love to see an open house, and ask what their family does. In my experience that conversation is what gets you through a door, the same way it does at Gawai. In 2026 the day itself was Saturday, 21 March, and the woven ketupat decorations going up in the malls in early March are your real signal that it is close.

Last updated: June 2026. Hari Raya 2026 fell on Saturday, 21 March (Day 2 Sunday, 22 March), with Friday, 20 March gazetted as an additional federal holiday; what’s-open notes based on Kuching, prior Raya periods.

Keep exploring Kuching Insider: Festivals in Sarawak, Sarawak’s public holidays, Gawai Dayak, and Chinese New Year in Kuching.

What makes Sarawak different from the rest of Malaysia is that its calendar runs on three overlapping cultures at once: Dayak, Chinese, and Malay, plus the Melanau and Orang Ulu communities most outsiders never hear about. If you are moving here or planning an extended visit, the festival calendar is worth learning early, because it decides when the city is full, when it empties, and when half the shops on your street are shut. The single most useful one to read up on first is Gawai Dayak, because it is the festival that most defines Sarawak and the one I most often see newcomers, myself included at the start, misjudge.

TL;DR

• Gawai Dayak (June 1–2) is Sarawak’s signature festival and a two-day public holiday; the city empties as people return to their longhouses.
• Chinese New Year (late Jan or Feb) and Hari Raya Aidilfitri are the other two festivals that shut shops and quiet the city for several days.
• The Rainforest World Music Festival, mid-year at Damai, is the one event most worth flying in for, and it sells out.
• Kuching Festival is a month-long August food fair, not a religious holiday; it is the easiest big event to just turn up to.
• Sarawak-specific festivals outsiders miss: Kaul (Melanau, around April), Borneo Cultural Festival in Sibu (July), and Mid-Autumn / Mooncake (September or October).
• The balik-kampung holidays (Gawai, Hari Raya, CNY) are a poor time for a first visit; many shops and eateries close for days.

What festivals are celebrated in Sarawak?

Sarawak’s year holds far more than the three big public holidays. Some are nationwide Malaysian festivals that land here too. Others are Sarawak-only, tied to peoples who live nowhere else in such numbers. Below is the full calendar, with rough timing, what each one is, whether it is a public holiday, and whether it is worth building a trip around. Treat the public-holiday column as a guide, because Sarawak gazettes some holidays separately from federal Malaysia, and the lunar-calendar festivals shift date every year.

When is Gawai Dayak?

Gawai Dayak falls on June 1 and 2 every year, and those are both public holidays in Sarawak. It is the harvest thanksgiving of the Dayak peoples, the Iban, Bidayuh, and Orang Ulu, and it is the festival that feels most particular to this state. The celebrating starts on the evening of May 31 and trails on for a week or more in the longhouses.

Living in Kuching, I felt Gawai before anyone explained it to me. Offices close. Colleagues drive back to their kampung. Supermarkets stack bamboo and the ingredients for tuak (home-brewed rice wine), and Dayak pop takes over the radio. You can take part if a Dayak friend invites you to their open house, or by booking the public Gawai programme that the Sarawak Cultural Village runs at Damai. What you cannot do is turn up uninvited at a stranger’s longhouse. The full etiquette, the food, and the practical planning are covered in the Gawai Dayak guide.

What is the Rainforest World Music Festival?

The Rainforest World Music Festival, usually shortened to RWMF, is a three-day international music festival held at the Sarawak Cultural Village in Damai, about 45 minutes north of the city. It pairs daytime music workshops in the village’s longhouses with evening main-stage concerts, and it draws acts and crowds from across the world. It is the one Sarawak event that people regularly fly in for, and it has been running since 1998.

Tickets sell out and accommodation near Damai books up months ahead, so plan early if you want to go. The full breakdown of dates, ticket types, where to stay, and how to get to Damai is in the Rainforest World Music Festival guide. One honest note before you build a trip around it: it is held outdoors at the edge of rainforest in the wet tropics, so an afternoon downpour during the festival is not unusual, and the field turns to mud fast.

Which Sarawak festivals do most visitors miss?

The three big ones get all the attention. The festivals that actually tell you something about Sarawak are the smaller, regional ones, and most guidebooks skip them.

Kaul (Pesta Kaul) is the Melanau festival, held around March or April, biggest in the coastal town of Mukah. It began as a ritual to appease the sea spirits before the fishing season, and the centrepiece is the seraheng, a tall decorated offering pole. The Melanau are one of Sarawak’s oldest communities, and Kaul is the clearest window into their world. It is a regional event rather than a state holiday, so you go to Mukah for it.

The Borneo Cultural Festival runs for about ten days in July in Sibu, the working river town up the Rajang. It is a street festival built around the town’s Chinese, Malay, Melanau, and Dayak communities, with nightly food, stage performances, and a parade. If you are already heading up to Sibu, timing your visit for the festival is an easy win, though Sibu is a commercial town rather than a polished tourist city, so set your expectations accordingly.

Mid-Autumn, or the Mooncake Festival, lands in September or October. In Kuching it centres on the old Chinese quarter, and Carpenter Street fills with lanterns, mooncakes, and stalls in the evenings. It is a lovely night out if you are already here. It is not a reason to book a flight.

Which Sarawak festivals are public holidays?

Knowing which festivals close the banks matters more for daily life than the celebrations themselves. Sarawak observes a mix of federal Malaysian holidays and its own state-gazetted ones, and Gawai is the clearest example of the latter. For the exact gazetted dates each year, check the official Sarawak state holiday gazette and the federal Malaysia public-holiday list; the Sarawak public holidays guide keeps a running version.

The reliable public-holiday festivals are Chinese New Year (two days), Hari Raya Aidilfitri (two days), Gawai Dayak (June 1 and 2), Hari Raya Aidiladha, Deepavali, and Christmas. The big ticketed and city events, RWMF, the Borneo Cultural Festival, Kuching Festival, and Mid-Autumn, are not public holidays, which is part of why they are easier to attend: the city keeps running around them.

Which festivals actually shut the city or fill it?

From a resident’s calendar, only a handful of dates genuinely change how Kuching functions, and they split into two kinds: the ones that empty the city and the ones that fill it.

The emptying festivals are the balik-kampung holidays, when people go home to their families. Gawai sends the Dayak community back to the longhouses. Chinese New Year clears out the Chinese community. Hari Raya does the same for Malay families. On those days, whole stretches of independent kopitiams and hawker stalls put up a handwritten sign or simply do not open, and they do not always tell you in advance.

The filling festivals are the events that pull crowds in. Kuching Festival in August turns a stretch of the city into a month-long food fair every evening. RWMF packs out Damai. The Mid-Autumn night markets crowd Carpenter Street. These are the dates when the city is at its liveliest, and they are the easier ones to plan a visit around precisely because nothing shuts.

What about Kuching Festival and the food fair?

Kuching Festival is a roughly month-long city celebration in August, and for most residents the main event is the food fair: rows of stalls running every evening, selling everything from grilled seafood to regional snacks you will not find the rest of the year. It is run by the city council to mark Kuching’s elevation to city status in 1988, and it includes stage shows and a fun fair alongside the eating.

It is the most accessible big event on the calendar. There is no ticket to celebrating it, no invitation needed, and nothing closes. You turn up hungry in the evening, walk the rows, and eat your way down them. If you are new to Sarawak food, it is a fast way to taste a lot of it in one place, and it pairs naturally with reading up on what to eat in Kuching first so you know what you are pointing at.

Which festivals are worth planning a trip around?

If you are choosing dates for a visit rather than already living here, three events justify building the calendar around them, and one stretch is best actively avoided.

Plan a trip for the Rainforest World Music Festival if you want the headline experience, booking tickets and Damai accommodation well ahead. Plan for Gawai Dayak only if you have a genuine invitation or a confirmed place on a public programme, because without one you will hit a closed city and miss the festival itself. Plan for Kuching Festival in August if you want the lowest-effort, highest-reward option: great food, no logistics, nothing shut.

And the honest counterpoint: during the big balik-kampung holidays, Gawai, Hari Raya, and Chinese New Year, Kuching empties and many shops and eateries close for several days. Those are a bad time for a first visit, full stop. I’ve watched friends arrive expecting the city at full tilt and find it running at half speed, their shortlist of places to eat shuttered with no warning posted on the door. If those are the only dates you can travel, the malls and chains stay open, but what you’ll see is a hollowed-out version of the city, not the one the rest of this site is about.

Where to start

Pick the one festival that fits your reason for coming, then read its dedicated guide before you book anything. If you are choosing a month for a first visit and want the city open and busy, aim for August and the Kuching Festival food fair. If you want the festival that best explains Sarawak, read the Gawai Dayak guide and start asking the Dayak people you know what their family does for June 1. The festival I still think about is not one I bought a ticket to. It was a June afternoon on a longhouse veranda, a warm cup of tuak in hand, that began with a colleague saying “come back to ours for Gawai”, “ours” being how we’d say our family home back in Manchester.

Keep exploring Kuching Insider: Gawai Dayak, Chinese New Year in Kuching, the Rainforest World Music Festival, Hari Raya in Sarawak, the Sarawak Cultural Village, and Sarawak’s public holidays.

Last updated: June 2026. Festival timings and public-holiday status checked against the Sarawak Tourism Board events calendar and the Sarawak state public-holiday gazette, June 2026.

Borneo Jazz Festival (Miri, July)

The Borneo Jazz Festival runs over a weekend each July at the Miri waterfront, about four hours north of Kuching by road. It draws international and regional jazz acts and is one of the few major music events outside Kuching worth factoring into a Sarawak itinerary. It is not a public holiday and the city does not close around it, so if you are already planning time in northern Sarawak, timing a visit to Miri around it is straightforward.

Regatta Kuching (November)

The Sarawak Regatta is one of the oldest events on the calendar, with boat races on the Sarawak River that go back to the 1800s. Teams race traditional wooden boats on the river in front of the waterfront esplanade, and the day pulls a mixed crowd of locals and visitors. It is a free, outdoor event, and the atmosphere on the riverbank is worth the trip on its own. Dates move slightly year to year; check the Sarawak Tourism Board calendar in advance.

Part of our guide to Festivals & Events.

I take visitors here when they have one free morning and no time to get to a real longhouse upriver. That is exactly what it is good for, and exactly where its limits are.

Key Takeaways

• Non-Malaysian entry: RM135 adult, RM85 child (ages 2 to 12). Malaysian entry: RM95 adult, RM65 child. Verified against scvticket.com.my, June 2026.
• Open daily 9am to 5pm. Two cultural dance shows: 11:30am and 4pm, roughly 45 minutes each.
• It sits in Pantai Damai, Santubong, about 35km / 45 minutes from central Kuching. No public bus goes door to door; you drive, Grab, take a tour, or use the Damai shuttle.
• Seven replica houses: Bidayuh, Iban, Penan, Orang Ulu, Melanau, Malay, and a Chinese farmhouse. You walk a loop and visit each.
• Plan on 2.5 to 3 hours, timed so you catch one of the two shows. Half a day is plenty.
• It is the venue for the Rainforest World Music Festival (RWMF), held here 26 to 28 June 2026.
• Honest verdict: a good primer if you can’t reach a real longhouse, but it is a curated stand-in, not the real upriver thing. Confirm current prices at scvticket.com.my.

What is the Sarawak Cultural Village?

It is an open-air museum built around a small lake, with seven full-size traditional dwellings you can walk into. Each one represents a major Sarawak group: the Bidayuh longhouse with its round headhouse, the long Iban longhouse, the Penan hut for Sarawak’s traditionally nomadic forest people, the tall and ornately painted Orang Ulu longhouse, the towering Melanau tall-house, a Malay town house, and a Chinese farmhouse. Inside each, staff from those communities sit and demonstrate something real: weaving a pua kumbu cloth, making sago, blowing a bamboo flute, spinning a blowpipe dart.

You pick up a printed passport at the entrance and get it stamped at each house, which sounds gimmicky and is, but it gives you a reason to walk into all seven rather than drifting past the first three. The whole circuit is paved, flat, and shaded, which is why I bring people who can’t manage a muddy jungle trail.

The thing to understand going in: this is a representation assembled in one place for visitors, opened in 1990, not a community that lives here. The houses are accurate and the demonstrators are genuinely from these groups. But nobody sleeps in these longhouses. It is culture arranged for convenient viewing, and how much that bothers you is the whole question.

How much does the Sarawak Cultural Village cost?

Checked against the official ticketing site, scvticket.com.my, in June 2026:

Entry includes the village and the cultural show. There is also a pricier “admission with lunch” package, which adds a buffet: around RM168 for a non-Malaysian adult and RM138 for a Malaysian adult at the June 2026 rates.

I’ll be straight about this: RM135 for a foreign adult is not cheap by Kuching standards, where a full hawker breakfast runs you under RM15 and Bako National Park entry is RM20. You are paying resort-attraction prices for what is, at heart, a two-and-a-half-hour walk-through. Whether that lands as fair depends entirely on what you compare it to, which I get into below. Prices do shift, so confirm the current figure at scvticket.com.my before you go rather than trusting any blog, mine included.

What are the show times, and is the dance show any good?

There are two cultural shows a day, at 11:30am and 4pm, each running about 45 minutes in an air-conditioned theatre. Almost everyone times their visit around one of them, and you should too: arrive an hour or so before, walk the houses, then sit for the show.

The performance runs through a sampler of dances from each group, ending with a ngajat warrior dance and usually a sumpit (blowpipe) demonstration where they pull someone out of the audience to try hitting a target. The costumes are elaborate, the musicians are good, and the dancers have clearly drilled it hundreds of times.

Here is the downside I won’t dress up: because they have drilled it hundreds of times, the show can feel performative, more dinner-theatre than ceremony. It is a polished tourist revue, and on an off day with a thin crowd it can feel a little going-through-the-motions. I have sat through it bored, and I have sat through it charmed and properly made up, as we’d say back in Manchester, meaning genuinely pleased. The difference was mostly the energy of that particular afternoon’s performers. Treat it as a fun overview, not a window into a sacred rite.

How do you get to the Sarawak Cultural Village from Kuching?

It is in Pantai Damai, Santubong, roughly 35km and a 45-minute drive north of central Kuching, near the Damai beach resorts. There is no single public bus that drops you at the gate, which trips up a lot of first-timers. Your realistic options:

1. Grab or taxi. The simplest door-to-door route. Budget roughly RM45 to RM70 one way depending on time of day and surge. The catch is getting back: cars are thin on the ground out at Damai, so pre-book your return or ask the village reception to call one, or you will wait.
2. Damai shuttle van. A shuttle runs between Kuching city hotels (it has long picked up around the Grand Margherita area) and Damai. Cheaper than a private Grab, but on a fixed timetable, so check current times and the fare directly rather than assuming.
3. Drive yourself. Easiest if you have a car. It’s a straightforward run out on the Santubong road, there’s free parking at the village, and you control your own timing around the show.
4. Organised half-day tour. Plenty of Kuching operators bundle transport plus entry. Convenient, removes the return-trip problem, and you pay a premium over doing it yourself.

If you are already staying at one of the Damai resorts, the village is a short hop and the whole getting-there problem disappears.

How long should you spend there?

Two and a half to three hours covers it comfortably. The realistic plan: arrive around 10:30am, walk the seven houses and let the demonstrators show you their crafts, catch the 11:30am show, and you are done by 12:30pm with the rest of the day free. Or do the afternoon version around the 4pm show.

A full day here would drag. There is no separate set of attractions to fill more time once you have done the loop and the show, and the craft demonstrations, while genuine, are short. This is a half-day outing, full stop. Anyone selling it as an all-day destination is overselling it.

Is it worth it? An honest take

For a specific kind of visitor, yes. If you have a day or two in Kuching, no time or appetite for a multi-hour boat trip upriver, and you want a clear, shaded, single-stop introduction to who actually lives in Sarawak, this does the job well. I left able to tell a Bidayuh roundhouse from a Melanau tall-house, which was more than I arrived knowing, and I’m an outsider who has lived in the state for years. For families with kids, the passport-stamping loop and the blowpipe demo hold attention better than a museum of glass cases.

But I won’t pretend it is the real thing, because it isn’t. The honest limitation is this: a real Iban longhouse upriver, where families actually live and you are a guest rather than a ticket-holder, is a completely different and better experience. The Cultural Village is the photocopy. A homestay at a working longhouse in Batang Ai or up the Skrang or Lemanak rivers will teach you more about Sarawak in one evening than the village does in an afternoon. The village exists because most visitors can’t or won’t do that, and to my mind it fills the gap honestly enough, but it is the lesser version and I’d want to know that before paying RM135.

So the call comes down to time. Short trip, want the overview, can’t get upriver: go, and enjoy it for what it is. Have three spare days and a sense of adventure: skip the village and go find a real longhouse instead.

What’s the connection to the Rainforest World Music Festival?

The Sarawak Cultural Village is the home venue of the Rainforest World Music Festival (RWMF), Sarawak’s biggest cultural event, held on its grounds every year. In 2026 it runs 26 to 28 June. During the festival the village is given over almost entirely to the event, with the lawns and lake setting turned into stages.

Know this for two opposite reasons. If you want the festival, the village is where you go, and those replica longhouses become the daytime workshop spaces for the musicians. If you just want the normal quiet walk-through, avoid the RWMF dates, because the calm museum experience isn’t what’s on offer then.

So, should you go?

Go if you have a free morning, want a shaded and well-organised crash course in Sarawak’s peoples, and accept that you are seeing a curated version rather than the living original. Time your arrival around the 11:30am or 4pm show, sort out your ride back to the city before you set off, and treat the RM135 as the price of compressing a week’s worth of travel into one easy half-day.

Planning the rest of your trip from the city? Read our guides to getting around Kuching and Bako National Park for the wildlife half-day, and pair the village with one of them to fill a full day out toward Santubong.

Last thing, from experience: when the dancer pulls someone out of the crowd for the blowpipe target, volunteer. Hitting a target with a sumpit on the first try is harder than it looks, the whole theatre laughs with you, and that thirty seconds of trying is the part your visitors will actually remember, not the photographs of the longhouses.

Keep exploring Kuching Insider: Gawai Dayak, Santubong, and how to spend a weekend in Kuching.

Part of our guide to Festivals & Events.

The practical version: from late May to early June 2026, Sarawak gets an unusually long festive stretch because Wesak Day, the Agong’s birthday, and Gawai all land within three days of each other, and the state has gazetted replacement days to cover the overlap. More on that below, because it’s the part I see trip up people in my own first few years here.

Key Takeaways

• Sarawak has 18 public holidays in 2026, more than most Peninsular states.
• Sarawak-only days: Good Friday (April 3), Gawai Dayak (June 1–2), Sarawak Day (July 22), Governor’s birthday (October 10).
• Early June is one long block: Wesak (May 31), Agong’s birthday + Gawai Day 1 (June 1), Gawai Day 2 (June 2), plus replacement days June 3 and 4.
• Banks, government offices, and schools close on gazetted holidays. Hawker stalls and malls mostly stay open, except during Gawai and Chinese New Year.
• Islamic holiday dates (Hari Raya, Awal Muharram, Maulidur Rasul) can shift by a day on moon sighting, so treat them as near-final, not locked.
• The real cost of all these holidays is administrative: anything involving a government counter slows to a crawl around the festive blocks.

The full 2026 Sarawak public holidays table

Here is every gazetted public holiday in Sarawak for 2026. “Federal” means it’s observed nationwide; “Sarawak only” means Peninsular states don’t get it.

\*Islamic holidays and Wesak depend on lunar or moon-sighting calendars and may move by a day if the official sighting differs. The dates above match the gazetted 2026 list as of mid-2026.

Which holidays are Sarawak-only?

Six 2026 holidays are state-only and do not appear on the Peninsular calendar: Good Friday (April 3), both days of Gawai Dayak (June 1–2), Sarawak Day (July 22), and the Governor of Sarawak’s birthday (October 10). The June 3 and 4 replacement days are also Sarawak gazette additions, so in effect the early-June block is largely a state affair stacked on top of a federal one.

Good Friday caught me out when I first arrived from KL. It’s a working day in most of Peninsular Malaysia, but in Sarawak, with its large Christian population among the Dayak and Chinese communities, it’s a full public holiday. Sabah observes it too. So a friend of mine in Kuala Lumpur is at his desk on April 3 while I am not.

Sarawak Day, on July 22, marks the day in 1963 when Sarawak was granted self-government ahead of joining the Malaysian Federation that September. The state gazetted it as a public holiday in 2016. It carries some political weight here, tied to debates about Sarawak’s autonomy within Malaysia, but for daily life it functions as a mid-week day off in the middle of the year.

What is Gawai Dayak and why does it close the city?

Gawai Dayak is Sarawak’s harvest festival, celebrated by the Iban, Bidayuh, and Orang Ulu communities on June 1 and 2. It’s the holiday that empties Kuching. Many Dayak families drive back to their longhouse or kampung for the week, so offices run on skeleton staff, plenty of eateries shut for several days, and the city goes quiet in a way it does at no other time except Chinese New Year. I’ve written a separate guide to what Gawai actually involves if you want the cultural detail.

In 2026 Gawai collides with two other holidays. Wesak Day falls on Sunday May 31, and the Agong’s birthday falls on Monday June 1, the same day as Gawai’s first day. Under the Sarawak Labour Ordinance the Agong’s birthday is a compulsory holiday that can’t be swapped out, so when Gawai Day 1 lands on it, the state grants a replacement. The result for 2026, per the state’s April announcement reported by The Star and DayakDaily:

• Sunday 31 May: Wesak Day
• Monday 1 June: Agong’s birthday and Gawai Dayak Day 1 (same day)
• Tuesday 2 June: Gawai Dayak Day 2
• Wednesday 3 June: replacement for Wesak Day (which fell on a Sunday)
• Thursday 4 June: replacement for Gawai Day 1 (which clashed with the Agong’s birthday)

For most office and government workers that’s a stretch from the weekend of May 30 through Thursday June 4, with normal work resuming Friday June 5. It’s a genuinely long break. It is also, if you need a government office in that window, a dead zone.

What’s actually closed on a Sarawak public holiday?

Not everything closes equally, and knowing the difference saves you a wasted trip.

Closed:
– Banks (branches; ATMs and online banking work as normal)
– Government offices: JPN, JPJ, immigration counters, LHDN, land office, the lot
– Public schools and most private schools
– Many clinics and government outpatient departments (hospital A&E stays open)
– Post offices

Usually open:
– Malls and supermarkets (often with slightly shorter hours)
– Hawker centres and most kopitiams, except during Gawai and Chinese New Year, when many close for days
– Grab, taxis, petrol stations
– Convenience stores

The two festivals that break the “malls stay open” rule are Gawai and Chinese New Year. During those, a lot of family-run stalls and shops genuinely shut, sometimes for the better part of a week, because the owners have gone back to the kampung or are hosting open houses. If you rely on a particular kolo mee stall, assume it’s closed over Gawai and plan your meals around the chains and food courts that stay open.

How do the holidays affect banks, offices, and schools?

Banks and government offices follow the gazetted Sarawak list, not the federal-only one. That matters for anyone dealing with immigration, road tax, or anything at a JPN or JPJ counter: you have to plan around the state calendar, not the dates your friends in KL are working.

Here’s the honest downside, and it’s the thing nobody mentions in the cheerful holiday roundups. The sheer number of holidays, clustered the way they are, makes getting official things done genuinely harder than in most of the country. Eighteen public holidays, several falling mid-week and several bunched into festive blocks, means there are long stretches where a government counter is either closed or operating with half its staff and a backlog. If your visa renewal, your road tax, or your bank appointment falls anywhere near early June, late March, or Chinese New Year, expect it to take longer, and expect the queue when offices reopen to be worse than usual. This is not a charming quirk you learn to love. It is a real friction cost of living here, and the only fix is to plan around it.

The moving Islamic dates add a second layer of annoyance. Hari Raya, Awal Muharram, and Maulidur Rasul are set by moon sighting, so the gazetted date can shift by a day, and occasionally the official confirmation comes late. For most years it’s fine, but if you’re booking flights or scheduling something tight around those dates, build in a day of slack.

Schools follow the public holiday calendar plus the separate school-term break schedule, which is set nationally and is not the same as the public holiday list. If you have kids at a Sarawak school, the term breaks are the dates that actually govern your year, and they don’t always line up with the public holidays.

How does Sarawak compare with Peninsular Malaysia?

Sarawak and Sabah get more public holidays than any Peninsular state. A worker in Selangor or Penang has a shorter list; they don’t get Good Friday, Gawai, Sarawak Day, or the Sarawak Governor’s birthday. The trade-off I didn’t think about until I lived with it: a national company with offices in both KL and Kuching has to run two different holiday calendars, and cross-state deadlines get awkward when one office is closed and the other isn’t. If you work remotely for a Peninsular or overseas employer, you’ll sometimes be the only person on a Sarawak holiday still expected at your desk, and sometimes the reverse.

Plan around it: a quick rule of thumb

If you need anything from a government counter or a bank in 2026, avoid the week of June 1, the Hari Raya stretch in late March, and the days bracketing Chinese New Year in mid-February. Go a week early or wait until the dust settles. For the official, always-current list, check the Sarawak state government portal at sarawak.gov.my before you commit to a date, since the moon-sighting holidays can still move.

My own signal that a holiday is coming isn’t the calendar. It’s the kolo mee stall I go to on Jalan Ban Hock putting up a handwritten “tutup” sign two days before Gawai. When that paper goes up, I know the next week belongs to the longhouse, not the office.

Keep exploring Kuching Insider: Gawai Dayak, Chinese New Year in Kuching, and the Rainforest World Music Festival.

Part of our guide to Festivals & Events.

I have been five times since 2019. I have also spent one of those years sitting in a stationary car on the Santubong road at half past midnight, so this guide covers both halves of the experience.

Key Takeaways

• 2026 dates: Friday 26 to Sunday 28 June, at the Sarawak Cultural Village, Santubong.
• Tickets (from rwmf.net): pre-sale, on now until 25 June, is RM283 for a one-day pass and RM765 for a three-day pass. At the door (26 to 28 June) it climbs to RM333 and RM835. Children 4 to 12 are RM80, under 3 free.
• Getting there: the free festival shuttle runs from the city (Riverside Complex and Merdeka Palace) roughly 9am to 1am with your ticket. Driving is 40 to 60 minutes; the road out after the night shows clogs badly.
• It rains, and the ground turns to mud. This is a rainforest in June. Bring or wear shoes you do not mind ruining.
• Days are workshops, nights are the big stages. The afternoon sessions are the part most first-timers underrate.
• Sleeping near the venue (Damai) saves you the late-night drive but costs more and books out months ahead. Commuting from Kuching is cheaper and means the traffic.

What actually happens at RWMF?

The festival splits cleanly into two halves, and they feel like different events.

The daytime, from early afternoon, happens inside the Sarawak Cultural Village itself, among the replica longhouses. This is where the workshops run: a West African drumming circle in one house, a session on the sape (the Orang Ulu lute that has become Sarawak’s signature instrument) in another, a dance lesson, instrument-makers showing how a thing is built. In 2026 the organisers list more than 50 workshops and cultural sessions across the weekend, drawing from over 200 performers from 12 countries. These sessions are small, sweaty, and genuinely interactive, and they are the part of RWMF that most people who only show up at night completely miss. My best memories of the festival are all from the afternoons.

The night is the part that sells the tickets. From early evening the crowd moves to the two main stages near the village entrance, and the headline acts play back to back until late. The sound is loud, the crowd is big, and standing on a field at the foot of Santubong while a band you have never heard of from a country you could not place plays something that somehow makes the whole field move is a specific kind of good that is hard to get anywhere else in Sarawak.

The 2026 edition runs under the theme “Regenerations: Roots & Rhythms,” with the usual mix of food stalls, craft stalls, and an eco-education area on the grounds.

When is RWMF 2026, and where exactly?

Friday 26 to Sunday 28 June 2026. The venue is the Sarawak Cultural Village in Santubong (also written Pantai Damai, Damai Beach), on the coast north of the city. It is roughly 35km from the centre of Kuching, which is a 40-minute drive on a clear run and closer to an hour when everyone is heading the same way.

Gates and the village open in the afternoon and the music carries on past midnight each night. The festival publishes the day-by-day set times closer to the event on its site, rwmf.net, so check there for the running order rather than trusting a number from me.

How much are RWMF 2026 tickets?

Prices climb in stages as the festival gets closer, so the worst time to buy is at the gate. These are the official 2026 prices from rwmf.net, checked in June 2026:

The early-bird window (RM235 for one day, RM635 for three) closed on 31 March, so if you are reading this in June you have missed the cheapest tier. The three-day pass works out cheaper per day than three singles, but only buy it if you actually intend to go all three nights, because by Sunday the late nights and the heat have a way of thinning out good intentions.

Buy from the official site or the Ticketmelon platform, not from a stranger in a Facebook group, because resold and fake tickets circulate every year.

One honest point on value: a couple doing all three days at pre-sale price is over RM1,500 on entry alone, before transport, food, or a room. RWMF is a good weekend, but it is not a cheap one by Kuching standards, and I would rather you knew that before you booked than felt it afterwards.

How do you get to the festival from Kuching?

The easy answer is the free shuttle. With a valid festival ticket you ride the official shuttle buses at no extra cost, running between the city and the venue from around 9am to 1am. The two city pick-up points are the Riverside Shopping Complex and the Merdeka Palace Hotel. The shuttle is the option I push hardest, because it skips the single worst part of the festival, which is the drive home.

If you drive yourself, it is 40 to 60 minutes each way and there is parking near the venue. Going in, that is fine. Coming out is the problem. Santubong is served by essentially one road, and when 20,000 people leave a field within the same 90 minutes after the last act, that road stops working. I once cleared the car park at around 12:15am and did not reach my flat in Kuching until close to 2am, most of it spent not moving. If you drive, either leave before the final headliner or make peace with sitting in it.

There is no useful public bus that lines up with festival hours, so it is realistically the shuttle, your own car, or a Grab. A late-night Grab back to the city is possible but pricey and not always there when the whole crowd wants one at once.

What should you bring, and what is it actually like on the ground?

It rains. This is a rainforest in the wet edge of the year, the afternoon sky opens up often, and the festival happens anyway. The field and the village paths turn to mud, and not polite mud either, the kind that pulls a flip-flop clean off your foot. The single most useful thing I can tell you is to wear shoes you are prepared to throw away, or cheap covered sandals with a strap. The year I wore white trainers, they were a write-off by sundown.

A practical packing list from five years of getting this wrong and then right:

• Shoes you can ruin. Covered, with a strap if possible. Not your good ones.
• A thin rain poncho. Umbrellas are awkward in a standing crowd; a poncho keeps you and your bag dry without blocking anyone.
• Cash and a card. Stalls take both, but queues for the few card terminals are long.
• A refillable water bottle. It is hot and humid even after dark, and you sweat more than you notice.
• Mosquito repellent. You are in a forest by a river at dusk. The mosquitoes know it.
• A small dry bag or zip-lock for your phone, because the rain is not optional.

The crowd is good-natured and mixed, lots of families in the afternoon and a younger crowd by midnight. It does get genuinely crowded near the main stages once the headliners start, and if you want room to breathe, the edges of the field are your friend.

Should you sleep near Santubong or commute from Kuching?

Both work, and the right choice comes down to money against the late-night drive.

Staying near the venue (Damai/Santubong). The resorts on Damai Beach are a few minutes from the gate, so you walk back to your room instead of facing the road. The catch is real: there are only a handful of properties out there, they raise rates for the festival weekend, and they sell out months ahead. By June for a late-June festival, you have most likely missed them. If you are planning next year, book the Damai accommodation the moment dates are announced, usually around March.

Commuting from Kuching city. Far more rooms, far more price points, and you are based in a city with proper food and a centre worth wandering. The downside is the commute each night, which the free shuttle handles well if you are willing to leave when it leaves, and which your own car handles badly. For most first-timers on a normal budget, I tell them to base in the city and ride the shuttle. You give up the short stumble back to a beachside room, but you keep a few hundred ringgit and a much wider choice of where to stay.

Is RWMF worth it?

If you have any interest in live music and you are in Kuching in late June, yes, with clear eyes. You will get rained on. You will stand in mud. You will pay more than a quiet weekend would cost, and if you drive you will sit in the worst traffic Sarawak produces all year. None of that is the part you remember.

What I remember is an afternoon in a longhouse learning to hold a sape badly while a Sarawakian player grinned at my fingering, the kind of session I came away from buzzing, as we’d say back in Manchester, properly thrilled, and then a field at midnight with the dark shape of Santubong behind the lights and a few thousand strangers all moving to the same drum. Book the shuttle, bring the bad shoes, and go.

Planning the rest of the trip? Read our guide to Bako National Park for a day out before the festival, and our Kuching cost of living breakdown to budget the wider trip.

Keep exploring Kuching Insider: the Sarawak Cultural Village, Sarawak’s public holidays, and how to spend a weekend in Kuching.

Part of our guide to Festivals & Events.

It lands harder here than in, say, Penang because of the makeup of the city. Kuching has one of the largest Chinese communities in Malaysia outside the peninsula, mostly Hokkien, Teochew, Hakka, and Foochow families whose great-grandparents settled around what is now the Old Town. When that many households all turn inward to their reunion dinners at once, the public city empties out. The first time I went looking for my usual kolo mee on the first morning, three of the four stalls I tried were shuttered with a red banner on the grille, and I was properly gutted, as we’d say back in Manchester, standing there with nowhere to eat.

TL;DR: Chinese New Year in Kuching

• When: First day Tuesday 17 February 2026, second day Wednesday 18 February 2026. Both are Sarawak public holidays.
• What closes: Most Chinese-run hawker stalls, kopitiams, and family shops, often from the eve through the first three to five days. Some do not reopen for a week.
• What stays open: Big malls (CityONE, Vivacity, the Spring), chain supermarkets, hotels, and 24-hour convenience stores, though on reduced hours.
• Where to see it: Carpenter Street and the Old Town, the Tua Pek Kong temple by the Waterfront, and Jalan Padungan, which gets strung with lights and runs a street parade most years.
• The big night: Reunion dinner on the eve, 16 February, is family-only and the most important meal of the year.
• Honest note: If you have no one to celebrate with, the first two days can feel isolating. Plan around it.

What is Chinese New Year actually like in Kuching?

It is quieter and more domestic than the tourist version you might picture. The loud, public part, the lion dances and the parade, is real but brief. Most of the festival happens behind closed doors, over food, with family who have flown back from Singapore, KL, and further.

The texture here is specific. Because the Chinese community is largely Hokkien, Teochew, and Hakka, the dialect you overhear at the markets in the run-up is not the Cantonese you might expect from films. Bak kwa (sweet barbecued pork) sellers set up temporary stalls along Padungan and outside the malls in late January, and the queues are genuinely long. The Foochow community, strong in Sarawak, brings its own dishes, including red-wine-residue cooking you will not easily find on the peninsula.

It also starts early and trails long. Shopping and spring-cleaning ramp up two weeks before, and the celebration officially runs fifteen days, to Chap Goh Meh, the fifteenth night. Most people are back at their desks after the two public holidays, but the visiting and the leftover pineapple tarts carry on into March.

What’s open and what’s closed during CNY in Kuching?

Assume most small, family-run Chinese businesses are shut from the eve onward, and you will not be caught out. Here is the rough split, based on what I see every year in my own neighbourhood:

A few real consequences. Malay and Indian Muslim (mamak) eateries mostly stay open through CNY, so a 24-hour mamak becomes the reliable fallback for a hot meal on the first two days. Grab still runs, but with fewer drivers and surge pricing around the parade. Banks close for the public holidays. If you take regular medication or need fresh produce, buy it before 15 February, because the wet market near me runs at a fraction of capacity for the better part of a week.

This is the genuine downside of CNY in Kuching, and I am not going to rescue it: for three or four days, the version of the city that runs on cheap, excellent hawker food simply switches off. Newcomers who treat it like a normal long weekend get stranded with a fridge full of nothing and every good stall closed. It is worse here than in a bigger, more transient city because so much of Kuching is family-run and Chinese-owned. Stock up.

Where do you see the festivities? Carpenter Street and the Old Town

The Old Town around Carpenter Street, the historic commercial core of Chinese Kuching, is where the public side of the festival concentrates. The street has 19th-century shophouses, clan temples, and kopitiams, and during CNY it gets red lanterns, occasional cultural performances, and a steady stream of people heading to the temples.

The Tua Pek Kong temple, on Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman by the Waterfront, is the oldest Chinese temple in Kuching, with records going back to the mid-1800s. On the eve and the first day it fills with people offering joss sticks and praying for the year ahead. Go early on the first morning to see it at full intensity without the worst of the crowd.

Jalan Padungan, the avenue of 1920s and 1930s rubber-boom shophouses, is the other focal point. Most years it is strung with lights and hosts a street parade around CNY, with lion and dragon dance troupes, floats, and a lot of noise. Check the Sarawak Tourism listings or the local press for the 2026 parade date, because it moves year to year and is sometimes held the weekend before.

What is the lion dance, and where will you see it?

The lion dance is two performers under a decorated lion costume, moving to a drum, cymbals, and gong, performed to bring luck and chase off bad spirits. In Kuching you will hear it before you see it: the drumming carries for blocks. Troupes go business to business around Carpenter Street, Padungan, and inside the malls, and a shop that wants a blessing for the year will hire one to perform out front and “eat” a head of lettuce hung above the door with a red packet tucked inside.

You do not need an invitation to watch. Stand back, let the troupe work, and do not get between the lion and the drummer. The malls schedule public performances over the first weekend, the easiest place to see one if you have kids who will not last long in a temple crowd. The firecrackers that sometimes go with it are loud and sudden, worth knowing if you are jumpy or have a nervous dog.

How do ang pao and visiting etiquette work?

Ang pao (red packets of money) flow from married people to unmarried people and children. If you are an unmarried adult, you receive rather than give, which catches a lot of expats off guard. If you are married, you give. A few practical rules I learned by getting them wrong:

• Give and receive with both hands. Same as exchanging a business card. One-handed reads as careless.
• Use new or clean notes, and even amounts where you can. Avoid anything with a four in it; the word for four sounds like the word for death.
• Never open the packet in front of the giver. Pocket it, thank them, open it later.
• Bring oranges, not nothing. If you are invited to someone’s home, two mandarin oranges are the standard gift. Showing up empty-handed is the faux pas, not getting the amount wrong.
• Greetings: Gong xi fa cai (wishing you prosperity) is the all-purpose one. In Kuching you will also hear it in Hokkien.

If a colleague or neighbour invites you to their open house during the fifteen days, go. The door is open, food is laid out, and people drop in across the afternoon. It is the best way for a newcomer to experience CNY in Kuching from the inside rather than from the street.

What is reunion dinner, and will you be part of it?

Reunion dinner on the eve, 16 February 2026, is the most important meal of the Chinese year, and it is family-only. It is not the kind of evening an outsider expects to be at, and in my years here I have not been, which is exactly as it should be. It is the night the whole family gathers, often at the eldest member’s home, for a long meal of dishes chosen for their symbolism: fish for surplus, a steamboat to gather everyone around one pot, yusheng (a raw-fish salad you toss together while shouting good wishes).

I would not expect an invitation to a reunion dinner in a first year or two here, or read anything into not getting one. It is a family Christmas dinner, not a public event. The invitation that did come my way was to an open house in the days after, the come-one-come-all counterpart to the closed reunion meal. That is the door that opens.

How should an expat handle the CNY week in Kuching?

Treat it as a planned shutdown, not a long weekend. The years I have enjoyed CNY here are the ones I prepared for; the flat year was the one I assumed the city would run as normal.

• Stock up before 15 February. Food, medication, cash. Assume your usual hawker stall is closed for a week.
• Find your fallback meals. Note which mamak and mall outlets near you stay open. You will rely on them.
• Say yes to any open-house invitation. It is the whole experience, condensed into one warm afternoon.
• Consider getting out of town. Some expats use the holidays to head to Bako or Santubong. Domestic flights and the better lodges fill up early, so book ahead.

If you are on your own for it, plan something rather than wait for the city to entertain you. A closed Kuching at CNY does not come to you.

The bottom line for 2026

Chinese New Year 2026 runs from the eve on 16 February through the public holidays on the 17th and 18th, and trails on to Chap Goh Meh in early March. In Kuching it is bigger and more all-encompassing than almost anywhere else in Malaysia, because so much of the city is Chinese and family-run, which is exactly why so much of it closes.

Planning your year around Kuching’s festivals? Read our guide to Gawai Dayak, the June harvest festival that empties the city the same way CNY does, and our why Sarawak feels different piece for the wider context on Borneo’s mix of communities.

One concrete marker to leave you with: the morning after the second day, the bak kwa stalls along Padungan drop to half-price and the queues are gone. That, more than any banner, is how you know the first wave of the festival has passed.

Keep exploring Kuching Insider: Gawai Dayak, Sarawak’s public holidays, and what to eat in Kuching.

Part of our guide to Festivals & Events.

When I first lived in Kuching, I noticed Gawai before anyone explained it to me. Offices close. Half of my Iban and Bidayuh colleagues drive back to their kampung or longhouse for the week. The supermarkets sell tuak ingredients and stacks of bamboo, and the radio switches to Dayak pop. It is one of the two festivals, alongside Chinese New Year, that genuinely empties parts of the city.

TL;DR: Gawai Dayak in one box

• When: June 1 every year, with June 2 also a Sarawak public holiday. Celebrating begins the evening before.
• Who: Sarawak’s Dayak peoples, primarily the Iban, Bidayuh, and Orang Ulu communities.
• What happens: Thanksgiving rituals, longhouse open houses, tuak (rice wine), ngajat dancing, and a lot of visiting.
• Where it’s biggest: Rural longhouses and kampung, not the city centre. Kuching itself goes quiet.
• For visitors: You can take part if you are invited or join an organised event. You cannot turn up at a stranger’s longhouse uninvited.
• Honest note: Many shops and eateries shut for a few days, so plan your meals.

What does Gawai Dayak actually mean?

Gawai began as an agricultural festival tied to the hill rice cycle. Dayak communities planted, weeded, and harvested rice by hand, and the close of that cycle called for a thanksgiving to the spirits and ancestors who were believed to look after the crop. The ritual core is older than the public holiday. Gawai Dayak was gazetted as a public holiday on 25 September 1964 and first officially celebrated on 1 June 1965, after years of campaigning by Dayak leaders for official recognition of the festival (Gawai Dayak, Wikipedia).

So there are two layers. There is the religious and agricultural ritual, which varies between groups and is led by community elders. And there is the public celebration that most people, including expats, encounter: the open houses, the food, the music, the family reunions. For Christian Dayak families, who are now the majority, Gawai sits alongside their faith rather than replacing it. A household might attend church and still pour the first cup of tuak in the old way.

The reunion part matters as much as the ritual. Gawai is when people who have moved to Kuching, Bintulu, or Kuala Lumpur for work go home. For a lot of families it is the one week a year the whole longhouse is full again.

What do people do during Gawai?

The heart of Gawai is the open house, and the heart of the open house is feeding everyone who walks in. On the eve of Gawai, a longhouse holds a ceremony to welcome the spirit of the harvest, and at midnight there is a toast, the ngiling bidai in some Iban communities, to mark the new year of plenty.

Here is what you can expect across the days:

• Tuak. Home-brewed rice wine, served the moment you sit down. Every family brews their own and every family thinks theirs is best.
• Food. Pansoh or manok pansoh is the dish people talk about: chicken cooked inside a bamboo tube over a fire with lemongrass and tapioca leaves. There is also kompia, glutinous rice cakes, kuih, and whatever the host has spent two days cooking.
• Ngajat. The traditional Dayak dance, performed in full costume with hornbill feathers and woven textiles. At a real longhouse this is not a show put on for outsiders; it is people dancing because it is Gawai.
• Visiting. Families move from door to door along the longhouse, eating and drinking a little at each one. By the afternoon, the pace is its own kind of marathon.
• Games and music. Blowpipe demonstrations, beauty pageants (the Kumang and Keling Gawai contests), and karaoke that runs well past sensible hours.

In Kuching itself, the Sarawak Cultural Village at Damai usually runs a Gawai programme, and there are public events around town. These are real and worth seeing, with the honest caveat I get into below.

Are Gawai and Kaamatan the same thing?

No. They are cousins, not twins. Gawai Dayak is celebrated in Sarawak on June 1. Kaamatan, also called Pesta Kaamatan, is the harvest festival of the Kadazan-Dusun and other Indigenous peoples of Sabah, the neighbouring state, and it falls on May 30 and 31.

They share a lot: both are rice-harvest thanksgivings, both involve rice wine (tuak in Sarawak, lihing in Sabah), both have a cultural pageant, and both are state public holidays. But they belong to different peoples, in different states, with different languages, rituals, and music. If you call a Sarawakian’s Gawai by the Sabahan name, expect a polite correction. The two festivals landing in the same fortnight is a coincidence of the rice calendar, not a single shared event.

Do the Iban, Bidayuh, and Orang Ulu all celebrate Gawai?

Yes, and not all in the same way. Gawai is a shared umbrella, but each Dayak group brings its own rituals, language, and food.

That last row answers a question people ask a lot: the Orang Ulu absolutely take part in Gawai, with their own customs layered on top. The sape, the soft-stringed instrument you may have heard at the Rainforest World Music Festival, comes from Orang Ulu communities.

How can an expat respectfully take part in Gawai?

Get invited, or go to a public event. Those are your two honest routes.

If a Dayak colleague or friend invites you to their open house or longhouse, say yes. That invitation is the whole key. The open houses I have been welcomed into felt genuinely warm, and the hosts seemed to take a quiet pride in a guest who turned up curious and respectful. I once spent Gawai at a Bidayuh friend’s family home in the Serian area, made up, as we’d say back in Manchester, to have been asked at all. I was there because a friend invited me, not because I bought a ticket, and that distinction mattered.

If you do not have a personal invitation, the public route is the Sarawak Cultural Village programme at Damai or city events listed by the Sarawak Tourism Board around late May. These let you see ngajat, hear the sape, and try the food without intruding on a family occasion.

What I would not do is treat a longhouse like an attraction you can drop into. A longhouse is people’s home. Tour operators do run longhouse Gawai visits, and a reputable one arranges everything with the community in advance, which is the version to book if you want the rural experience without a personal connection.

Gawai etiquette: what to bring and how to behave

A few things I picked up by getting them slightly wrong the first time:

• Bring a small gift. A buah tangan (literally “hand fruit”, a host gift) is expected. Biscuits, fruit, soft drinks, or beer all work. Cash in a packet is fine for close family hosts.
• Accept the tuak, or decline gently. Refusing the first cup outright can read as cold. If you do not drink, take it, touch it to your lips, and say so warmly. People understand.
• Eat something at every house. Even a mouthful. Clearing your plate and accepting food is the compliment.
• Dress modestly and take your shoes off at the longhouse door, the same as entering a home.
• Ask before photographing people, rituals, and especially elders. The dancing is usually fine; a miring offering ceremony may not be.
• Use “Selamat Hari Gawai” as your greeting. “Gayu guru gerai nyamai”, a longer Iban blessing, will earn you a grin if you attempt it.

The one thing worth being straight about: I found tuak took some getting used to, and the homemade stuff is far stronger than it goes down. It is sweet and easy at first, then it is not. Pace yourself, because your host will keep your cup full and the day is long.

What’s open and closed in Kuching during Gawai?

This is the practical bit people forget. June 1 and 2 are public holidays in Sarawak, and Gawai noticeably hollows out the city. A chunk of Kuching’s hawker stalls, kopitiams, and small shops run by Dayak owners close for several days, some for the full week, and they do not always post that they are shutting.

Here is the honest planning picture:

• Malls (VivaCity, the Spring, Plaza Merdeka) stay open, with holiday hours. Chain restaurants and supermarkets inside them keep running.
• Independent kopitiams and hawker centres are a gamble. Many close. Your favourite kolo mee stall may simply not be there.
• Grab keeps working but surge pricing and longer waits are normal over the holiday.
• Government offices, banks, and clinics close on the public holiday days. Plan prescriptions and admin around it.
• Tourist sites like Bako National Park and the Cultural Village stay open and get busy.

If you are not celebrating, treat the first few days of June a bit like you would Chinese New Year in Kuching: stock the fridge, confirm anywhere you plan to eat is open, and accept that the city is running at half speed.

A few honest cautions before you go

The version of Gawai you see at a hotel buffet or a staged cultural show is a thinned-out copy of the real thing. The real Gawai happens in a longhouse three hours up a river with people you were invited to join, and you cannot manufacture that with a ticket. If a tour sells you a “traditional Gawai experience” in a two-hour slot in the city, what you are getting is the performance, with the heart of it left back home where it belongs.

And the tuak warning bears repeating, because newcomers underestimate it every single year and pay for it the next morning.

None of that is a reason to skip Gawai. It is a reason to go in honestly: as a guest, on someone’s invitation or at a proper public event, with a gift in hand and a slow approach to the rice wine.

Where to start

If you want to experience Gawai this year and you do not yet have an invitation, do one specific thing: check the Sarawak Tourism Board’s events listings in mid-May and book onto the Sarawak Cultural Village Gawai programme at Damai. Then ask the Dayak people you already know what they are doing for June 1. In my experience, the conversation that starts with “what does your family do for Gawai?” is the one that eventually gets you to a longhouse. Last June, the photo on my phone that I keep coming back to is not the dancing. It is a plastic cup of warm tuak on a longhouse veranda at 2pm, half empty, with three more being poured.

Keep exploring Kuching Insider: Sarawak’s public holidays, the Sarawak Cultural Village, and why Sarawak is so special.