Gion Festival Blogs

Are you hoping to attend the 2023 Gion Matsuri? Here’s a quick guide for how to best enjoy this year’s Gion festival. Read on for what’s new, some key highlights and how you can stay refreshed and inspired during Kyoto’s most famous summer festival.

Kyoto’s famous Gion Festival and its yamaboko floats returned in 2022 after two quiet covid years. Learn about highlights in this extraordinary year, including Taka Yama's debut and covid precautions.

Kyoto’s famous Gion Festival and its yamaboko floats return in 2022 after two quiet covid years. Click to learn about highlights and prospects for both the Saki Matsuri and Ato Matsuri, including Taka Yama's debut.

Combining spiritual practices to benefit all beings with history, magic, myths, and legend, it’s challenging to be cooler than a committed yamabushi. Did you know that dozens of yamabushi participate in Kyoto’s extraordinary Gion Festival every year? Learn more here.

More than a millennium of extraordinary history and culture have made Gion Festival Japan's most famous festival. Click to learn more.

Will Gion Matsuri 2022 happen? Who decides and how? Read about whether or not Kyoto's epidemic-destroying festival can do its thing in 2022.

The Yasaka Jinja is usually buzzing with visitors during the Gion Festival, but not in 2021. Image courtesy Jorie Johnson. No doubt the Gion Festival community and Kyoto authorities felt heartbroken to scale back the Gion Festival 2021 due to covid. Of course, this...

Since the Gion Festival was designed to end epidemics, how has the Gion Festival responded to Covid in 2021? Tradition meets safety.

Though the Gion Festival floats processions have been canceled in 2021 for the second year in a row due to covid, Gion Festival Yamaboko Floats Association officials and Yasaka Shrine representatives announced that 18 floats would be constructed and decorated this...

KYOTO––The 2021 Gion Festival will again be held on a much smaller scale than usual, same as 2020. Once more this is due to the covid virus and concerns about it spreading in public gatherings. The highlights of the annual festival are the processions of the gigantic...