Ten of the strangest festivals still held around the world

Most festivals rhyme: lanterns, food, a parade. The ones that don't tend to be more interesting. A man dressed as a devil leaps over a row of infants; two sumo wrestlers race to see who can make a one-year-old cry first. All of it happens on schedule, every year, on the same patch of ground.

Naki sumo, Japan

Every April and May, sumo wrestlers at shrines across Japan hold infants in a ring and shout at them. The first baby to cry wins; if both cry, the louder one takes the match. The custom is a prayer for health, built on the old saying that a crying baby drives off evil spirits. The 2026 season ran from 18 April at a shrine in Tokyo's Nerima ward through venues in Nagoya, Yokohama and beyond, per the official schedule; Tokyo Cheapo describes the spectacle plainly: the whole point is the crying.

Daradara Matsuri, Tokyo

Shiba Daijingu shrine in Tokyo's Minato ward runs one festival for eleven straight days every September, the longest shrine festival in Japan according to the Minato City tourism board. The name translates roughly as "dragging on and on". Locals also call it the ginger festival, because the shrine hands out fresh ginger said to ward off colds. This year's run ended on 21 September.

World Bog Snorkelling Championships, Wales

The idea was hatched in the Neuadd Arms pub in Llanwrtyd Wells, a Welsh town of about 600 people. Competitors swim two lengths of a trench cut through a peat bog, 120 yards in all, using no conventional stroke; flippers and a snorkel are allowed, and that is it. The 40th edition drew 201 swimmers on 30 August. The Athletic reported that Emily Hall set the fastest time of the day, 1 minute 27.97 seconds, beating the men's winner Adrian Sandstrom of Sweden by a third of a second.

Cooper's Hill cheese rolling, England

A wheel of Double Gloucester is rolled down Cooper's Hill near Brockworth, and a few dozen people throw themselves after it down a slope with a 1:2 gradient. Nobody catches the cheese; it has been clocked at around 70 mph. The 2026 races in May carried extra drama, because local legend Chris Anderson, a 23-time winner, came out of retirement after a public challenge from Germany's Tom Kopke. Kopke won by a few yards, his third consecutive title, as the Gloucestershire Gazette reported.

El Colacho, Spain

In Castrillo de Murcia, a village near Burgos, babies born during the previous year are laid on mattresses in the street, and men in red-and-yellow devil costumes jump over them. The ritual has been part of the Corpus Christi celebrations since 1620 and is meant to carry away the infants' sin and illness, according to Wikipedia. This year's jump took place on 7 June.

Night of the Radishes, Mexico

Oaxaca hands its main square to radishes every 23 December. The vegetables are grown oversized on purpose, some longer than 50 cm, and carvers turn them into nativity scenes, folk figures and the occasional spaceship, with winners announced around 9 p.m. The contest has been an official city event since 1897, when the mayor decided the carved radishes at the Christmas market deserved a prize structure. The New York Times sent a reporter to the most recent edition.

Camel wrestling, Türkiye

Every January, the Aegean town of Selçuk hosts Türkiye's largest camel wrestling day: around a hundred male Tülü camels in decorated saddles, and roughly 20,000 spectators, per event guides. The sport borrows the animals' own mating-season tussling and goes back centuries; the 2026 edition ran on 18 January at the Pamucak arena, Advantour notes. Matches end when one camel runs off, sits down or falls, and referees step in quickly.

Fierljeppen, the Netherlands

Fierljeppen is canal-jumping with a pole that runs up to 13 metres: sprint, plant the pole in the canal bed, climb it while it tips forward, land on the far sand bank. Touching the water voids the attempt. The Dutch record stands at 22.21 metres, set by Jaco de Groot in 2017, and only a few hundred jumpers are registered worldwide, per Wikipedia. A University of Amsterdam paper on the sport's biomechanics notes it was formally recognised as Frisian cultural heritage in 2018.

Silvesterchlausen, Switzerland

Urnäsch, a village in Appenzell, celebrates New Year's Eve twice: once on 31 December and again on 13 January, the date on the old Julian calendar. Groups of men spend the day walking from farm to farm in costumes that weigh over 65 pounds, ringing sets of bells and singing a wordless yodel, according to the Swiss inventory of living traditions. Costumes come in three types: beautiful, ugly, and beautifully ugly.

Air Guitar World Championships, Finland

Oulu hosted the 30th Air Guitar World Championships in late August, with more than 50 competitors from 13 countries performing for 60 seconds each on instruments that do not exist. Finland's Aapo "The Angus" Rautio took his second straight title with 34.8 points; Japan's Nanami "Seven Seas" Nagura finished second, per the official results. Organisers maintain that if everyone in the world played air guitar, wars would end; Euronews confirmed the claim remains untested.

None of these events needs explaining to the people who show up. That is the thing about festivals: what starts as somebody's ordinary becomes, a few hundred kilometres away, something worth a detour.