How to Find Festivals Around the World (Before You Miss a Bucket List Event)
Planning a trip gets a lot more exciting once you learn how to find festivals around the world before you book anything. Some of the most unforgettable travel moments aren’t landmarks or viewpoints, they’re once-a-year celebrations you didn’t even know were happening.
From lantern festivals in Japan to food fairs in small European towns, there are incredible cultural events happening year-round. The problem is most travelers only discover them after it’s too late.
If you want your travels to revolve around bucket list experiences instead of random timing, you need to know where to look. Here’s exactly how to find festivals, celebrations, and global events before you start planning your trip.
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Festivals Around the World Are Closer Than You Think
There are thousands of festivals happening across the globe every single week. Religious celebrations, food fairs, music festivals, cultural parades, seasonal traditions, harvest parties, art events, you name it. The wild part is most travelers never even know they’re happening.
Major events like Rio Carnival or Oktoberfest are easy to spot. They dominate Instagram, Pinterest, and travel guides. But the real magic often lives in the smaller celebrations. The local cherry blossom festival in a neighborhood park. A lantern release in a mountain town. A regional wine harvest in a place you’ve never heard of.
🎉 Why Look for Different Festivals Around the World?
These events can completely transform a trip. They add energy, culture, and a sense of connection you just don’t get from sightseeing alone. The difference between a “nice vacation” and an unforgettable one often comes down to timing.
The problem is not that festivals are rare. It’s that no one teaches you how to actually find them.
👀 A Peak Into How to Find Festivals Around the World
This guide isn’t about telling you which events to go to – it’s about how to find festivals around the world that you’ll love! Here is a quick peak into our step-by-step-process:
How to Find Festivals Around the World: Our Step-by-Step System
If you want to know how to find festivals around the world before booking a trip, you need more than a quick Google search. This is the exact process we use when planning our travels, and it consistently uncovers events we would have otherwise missed.
📆 Step 1: Make a Calendar
The first step to finding festivals around the world to attend, is to get organized. Draw your own calendar, make a monthly list, or simply use your digital calendar.
First, add any events you know about already, and add them to your calendar. Ones like Oktoberfest in Germany or Carnival in Brazil are big ones, and might have already been events you were eyeing. Write these down first, and then we’ll teach you how to find festivals around the world that you didn’t know about!
🔎 Step 2: Start Your Basic Research
Now is the fun part! We’re going to start researching the best festivals around the world. There are plenty of great articles out there for inspiration (we also have one with 55 holidays and festivals around the world).
Read some articles and see which events interest you. Write these down, and then include them on your calendar.
This will be your first round of finding unique festivals around the world that you may not have hear of!
55 Epic Holidays & Festivals Around the World to Enjoy in 2026
There are so many incredible holidays and festivals around the world to enjoy! From carnival celebrations to lantern festivals, there is a wide variety of wild parties and traditional rituals that you can find across the globe.
👀 Step 3: Look for Events by Time of Year or Destination
Now, let’s dive deeper! Here’s how to find festivals around the world that are a bit more specific. This helps narrow things down to when you can travel, or checking off your bucket-list destinations simultaneously.
❣️ How to Find Festivals Around the World for Specific Destinations
When planning a trip, most travelers pick their dates first and research second. We do the opposite. Before locking in flights, we search the destination we’re eyeing – with different variations of the month and the word “festival,” “annual event,” or “celebration.”
For example, instead of just searching “things to do in Valencia,” we search “Valencia festivals in March” or “annual events in Valencia spring.” This simple shift changes the results completely. You’ll often discover that a major cultural event is happening just a week before or after your original plan.
Having flexible dates at this stage gives you the power to align your trip with something special instead of missing it by accident. This step alone can turn a regular itinerary into one built around a once-a-year experience.
📆 How to Find Festivals Around the World for Specific Times of the Year
Once we know the general timeframe we’re considering, we research the destination by month. Searching “Italy in September” or “festivals in Japan in August” often leads to seasonal roundups that reveal harvest festivals, religious celebrations, or cultural events tied to specific times of year.
Many festivals aren’t marketed as global attractions. They’re seasonal traditions that locals expect every year. Monthly guides often highlight these recurring events in a way general travel posts don’t.
If you’re planning far in advance, this step also helps you identify the best month to visit specific destinations based on events, not just weather.
💡 We have monthly destination guides on our site, all of which include places to visit that have special events during that month!
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🎶 How to Find Festivals Around the World that Suit Your Interests
If you want to find some of the coolest festivals for YOU, then don’t forget to do some more specific research! Rather than just searching “top holidays around the world“, look up “the best music festivals around the world”, “the most unique food events around the world”, or “the most bizarre cultural celebrations around the world”.
Whether you’re an artist, musician, foodie, or partier, there truly is something for everyone out there! We’ve found everything from body painting festivals to vegetarian festivals to fire festivals.
The creativity is out there – you just need to find it!
📲 Step 4: Use Social Media as a Research Tool, Not Just Inspiration
Social media is powerful when used intentionally. Instead of scrolling randomly, search the destination name alongside the month or event-related hashtags. Look at posts from previous years around the same dates.
If a lantern festival happened in March last year, there’s a strong chance it will happen again in March this year. Social platforms often reveal the atmosphere, scale, and vibe of an event in a way official websites don’t.
This is also where you’ll sometimes discover lesser-known events that locals attend but international travel blogs overlook.
💡 Follow travel creators from destinations you want to visit – they often make content around special events!
📆 Step 5: Check Official Tourism Websites and Local Calendars
Tourism boards are one of the most underrated tools for event discovery. Most cities and countries maintain event calendars that list annual festivals, parades, and cultural celebrations that never make it into mainstream blog content.
When planning a trip to Japan, for example, regional tourism pages often list seasonal matsuri and lantern festivals that aren’t heavily advertised internationally. These official sources are also where you’ll find confirmed dates, which is crucial since some festivals shift each year.
Beyond tourism boards, local event calendar websites can surface community celebrations, food fairs, and smaller regional festivals that add some smaller surprises to your trip.
📝 Step 6: Double-Check Dates and Build in Flexibility
Festival timing isn’t always fixed. Some follow religious calendars. Others depend on harvest cycles or lunar dates. That’s why we never rely on one source.
Before finalizing flights or accommodations, we confirm dates directly on official sites or through multiple reliable sources. If possible, we also build a small buffer into our itinerary. Arriving a day earlier or leaving a day later can protect you in case schedules shift slightly.
Also, some events last longer than the “official date”. For example, Dia de los Muertos is November 1st, but the entire week before is full of cool celebrations you won’t want to miss out on! This final step ensures that the festival you planned your entire trip around actually aligns with your travel dates.
How to Find Festivals Around the World: Final Thoughts & What’s Next
Once you learn how to find festivals around the world before booking your trip, travel turns from fun to truly epic. Instead of arriving somewhere at a random moment in the year, you show up when the streets are alive, traditions are on full display, and the energy of a place is in its prime.
The difference isn’t luck. It’s timing. A little extra research can mean witnessing a once-a-year lantern release, enjoying into a regional harvest celebration, or planning your entire itinerary around a cultural event you would have otherwise missed.
If you want your travels to revolve around bucket list experiences instead of ordinary weeks, start looking at destinations through the lens of what’s happening, not just where you’re going. The world is always celebrating something – you just have to know how to find it!
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👀 What’s Next?
Now that you know how to find festivals around the world, it’s time to move on to the next step of planning your trip. Next week, we’re going to cover how to find local events while traveling.
Also, here are some other guides to help you plan your trip:
✈️ 3 Easiest hacks for booking flights
📆 When to buy your flight
🤑 Flight hacking for beginners
📆 How to plan your 2026 travels
🤑 How to visit expensive destinations on a budget
🍃 30 Ways to become a more eco-friendly traveler
🛌 How to find unique stays
🗺 How to create an itinerary with Google Maps
🤖 How to plan an epic trip step-by-step (without Chat GPT)
📲 10 Travel apps that will save you time and money
📝 10 Travel essentials you didn’t know you needed
🧳 28 Life-changing packing tips
🎒 Top 6 backpacks for travelers
💻 Strategies for booking your trip
👩🏻💻 10 Tips for working remotely while traveling
So are you ready to to find festivals around the world to experience? We hope that this guide has helped you explore more unique events across the globe, and that they make it into your travel plans.
Want some other life-changing travel tips? We have a ton of other travel planning and packing guides as well. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to get our weekly article updates, and to receive exclusive discounts on our shop!
Still feeling overwhelmed with it all? We can plan your perfect trip for you, or you can sign up for a one-on-one consultation where we spend one-on-one time with you to guide you through everything.
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