The Rainforest World Music Festival (RWMF) is a three-day world-music festival held at the Sarawak Cultural Village in Santubong, about 35km north of Kuching. In 2026 it runs from Friday 26 to Sunday 28 June, the 29th time it has happened. The format is the same every year: afternoon music workshops and cultural sessions inside the village, then main-stage concerts at night under the bulk of Mount Santubong. It is the one weekend a year when a small Bornean cultural park turns into a field of 20,000-odd people, and for all its flaws it is still the thing I tell visiting friends to time their trip around.
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:
| Pass | Pre-sale (1 Apr to 25 Jun) | Door (26 to 28 Jun) |
|---|---|---|
| Adult, 1 day | RM283 | RM333 |
| Adult, 3 day | RM765 | RM835 |
| Child (4 to 12), 1 day | RM80 | RM80 |
| Under 3 | Free | Free |
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.