Sarawak’s festivals are not primarily staged for visitors, which is the main thing worth knowing before planning a trip around one. Gawai is a household occasion first and a public event second; the Rainforest World Music Festival is a ticketed international event with a very different character. Both are open to outsiders, but they ask for different things from you, and the calendar has room for both.
Gawai Dayak — 1 June
Gawai Dayak marks the end of the padi harvest and the start of a new planting cycle for Sarawak’s Iban, Bidayuh and other Dayak communities. The celebration really begins on the eve of 1 June, when longhouses fill with the smell of manok pansoh cooking in bamboo and tuak, the home-brewed rice wine, is poured for everyone who comes through the door.
The ngajat is the image most people carry away — a dance whose sweeping arm movements are often described as echoing the flight of the hornbill, performed in feathered headdresses and beaded vests. What makes Gawai genuinely unusual for a visitor is the open-house tradition: no invitation is required, and an Iban longhouse or Bidayuh longhouse around 1 June is one of the most direct ways to encounter Dayak culture. It is also a good moment to know the etiquette before you arrive.
Rainforest World Music Festival — July
The Rainforest World Music Festival runs over three days at the Sarawak Cultural Village, in a rainforest cove at the foot of Mount Santubong. It has two halves that operate almost independently: daytime workshops and jam sessions held inside the village’s traditional houses, where musicians from very different traditions work out what they have in common, and the evening main stages, which are a straightforward outdoor festival. The daytime half is the part most first-timers underestimate.
Kuching Festival — August
A month-long celebration of the state capital, best known outside Sarawak for its enormous open-air food fair. If your interest in Sarawak food is the reason you are travelling, August in Kuching concentrates an unreasonable amount of it into a few streets.
Borneo Cultural Festival — July
Sibu’s showcase of Dayak, Malay, Chinese and Melanau heritage, food and performance — the upriver counterpart to what Kuching does on the coast, and a useful reason to spend time in a town most itineraries skip past on the way to the Rejang.
Planning around the calendar
June and July are the busiest months in Sarawak precisely because Gawai and the Rainforest World Music Festival fall close together, and they overlap with the drier stretch of the year that also suits trekking in Gunung Mulu. That combination puts real pressure on flights and beds, particularly anywhere with limited capacity. If a festival is the anchor of your trip, book the travel around it before anything else.