Festivals · Tue 27 Oct 2026
Rainforest World Music Festival 2027: the 30th edition, 25 to 27 June
The Rainforest World Music Festival returns to the Sarawak Cultural Village at Santubong, Kuching, from 25 to 27 June 2027, thirty years after the first edition under Mount Santubong.
Few festivals anywhere have a setting like this one. The Sarawak Cultural Village, a living museum of Sarawak's peoples built around a lake at the foot of Mount Santubong, 40 minutes north of Kuching, turns its longhouses and lakeside stages over to world music for three days each year. The 2027 edition, from Friday 25 to Sunday 27 June, is the festival's 30th.
How the days run
Afternoons belong to the workshops: musicians from the line-up teach, demonstrate and jam in the longhouses, and the audience is close enough to ask questions. Evenings move to the main stages by the lake, where the bill mixes Sarawak's own sape players and traditional troupes with touring acts from every continent. It is a festival you participate in by day and watch by night.
Staying for it
The resorts at Damai Beach, beside the village, fill for the festival weekend and are the walk-home option. Kuching itself is the other base: festival shuttle buses run between the city and Santubong, and staying on the Kuching Waterfront gives you the city's food and old town around the festival days. Book either early; the 30th edition will draw festival-goers from across the region and beyond.
Why it anchors this calendar
The Rainforest festival is the event Sabah and Sarawak's cultural calendar is judged by, and it is the clearest proof on this site that Malaysia's calendar does not end at the Klang Valley. The listing carries the official source and confirmed dates, checked before publication.
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