Gawai Dayak is the harvest festival of Sarawak’s Dayak peoples, celebrated every year on June 1. It marks the end of the rice-growing season and gives thanks for the harvest. The word gawai means a ritual or festival in several Dayak languages, and Dayak is the collective term for Sarawak’s Indigenous groups, mainly the Iban, Bidayuh, and Orang Ulu. In practice it runs as a two-day public holiday on June 1 and 2, though the eating and visiting often start on the evening of May 31 and trail on for a week or more.
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.
| Group | Roughly who | Gawai texture |
|---|---|---|
| Iban | The largest Dayak group in Sarawak | Longhouse open houses, ngajat, tuak, miring offering rituals. The Iban version is the one most visitors picture. |
| Bidayuh | Concentrated around Kuching, Bau, Serian | Their own dialects and a strong village-church overlap. Many Bidayuh kampung are an easy drive from the city. |
| Orang Ulu | Upriver peoples: Kenyah, Kayan, Kelabit, Penan and others | Yes, they celebrate Gawai. Distinct music (the sape lute), beadwork, and longhouse traditions of their own. |
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.