Lotus Lantern Festival Seoul: Yeondeunghoe Guide for 2027

For one Saturday night each spring, the main street of old Seoul is closed to traffic and handed over to lanterns: paper lotuses on sticks, dragons the length of a bus, elephants, tigers, a baby Buddha in a palanquin, and tens of thousands of people carrying them.

연등회 (Yeondeunghoe), usually called the Lotus Lantern Festival in English, is the celebration of Buddha’s Birthday. In 2020 it was added to UNESCO’s list of the intangible heritage of humanity, which describes it as a national spring festival “open to all”: anyone can take part, whatever their faith.

This is Part 4 of our Faith in Korea series.

What is Yeondeunghoe?

It is a lantern festival held in the run-up to 부처님오신날 (Bucheonim Osinnal), Buddha’s Birthday, a national holiday on the 8th day of the 4th lunar month. Lighting a lamp in front of the Buddha is one of the oldest Buddhist offerings: the lamp stands for the light of wisdom, and for making your own mind clear.

The history is long. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture dates it as a state event to 551 under Silla, held at Hwangnyongsa temple in Gyeongju, and the Samguk Sagi records Silla kings going to Hwangnyongsa to view the lanterns in 866 and 890. In Goryeo, the founding king Taejo named Yeondeunghoe in his Ten Injunctions to his successors, and it became a great national festival with a state procession of more than 1,500 people, according to the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture. The first record of lanterns lit specifically on the 8th day of the 4th month dates to the reign of King Uijong in the 12th century; under King Gongmin the custom reached ordinary households.

The festival is organised by the Yeon Deung Hoe Preservation Committee, based at the Jogye Order headquarters beside Jogyesa. Several Buddhist orders take part together.

What happens during the festival?

The core is a single weekend in Jongno. In 2026 it looked like this, according to the official festival site and the Seoul Metropolitan Government.

🏮 Yeondeunghoe 2026 programme (official)

The parade is the main event. Near the front come a palanquin carrying the baby Buddha, guardian-king lanterns, and giant traditional lanterns: phoenixes, dragons, turtles, lotuses. Then come temple groups, lay associations and universities, each with their own lanterns, and thousands of people each carrying a small hand lantern.

The big lanterns are made the traditional way: a frame of split bamboo or shaped wire, covered piece by piece with 한지 (hanji), Korean mulberry paper, glued over each opening and painted, with lights inside. Temples and lay groups spend months building them, and the Preservation Committee runs traditional lantern-making courses and seminars through the year to keep the craft alive. The small hand lanterns most marchers carry are usually lotus flowers: a paper cup-shaped frame covered in dozens of pinched petals of coloured tissue paper, lit by a candle or bulb. The lotus is the point. It grows out of mud and flowers clean, which is the Buddhist image of an awakened mind in an ordinary life.

If you watch closely you will see the groups’ identities in their lanterns: temple names on banners, university lanterns in school colours, and in 2026 a set of restored North Korean-style traditional lanterns carried by people who had come from the North.

After the parade, the crowd folds into the Daedong Hanmadang at Jonggak: circle dances, music, and a finale in which paper flower petals are showered over the street. On Sunday, the road in front of Jogyesa becomes a fair of booths for lantern-making, temple food tasting, meditation, games and a foreigners’ lantern-making contest; around 70 groups ran 129 booths in 2026, according to Newsis. The weekend ends with a looser, joyful closing parade through Insadong.

How can a foreigner join the lantern parade?

You can march. For 2026, the Jogye Order’s Overseas Special Parish (해외특별교구) ran an open programme for “citizens and foreigners, anyone”, with a lantern-making session followed by a place in the parade.

🙋 The 2026 open parade programme (Yeondeunghoe notice)

The Sunday fair outside Jogyesa is the easiest way to make a lantern without registering in advance. Workshops there are first come, first served.

When is the festival in 2027?

Buddha’s Birthday falls on the 8th day of the 4th lunar month. In 2027 that is Thursday 13 May, according to the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute’s lunar calendar. The lantern festival weekend usually comes one to two weeks earlier, with the parade on the Saturday night (16 May in 2026, nine days before Buddha’s Birthday; 26 April in 2025, nine days before), but the 2027 dates had not been published when we checked in September 2026. The official site announces the programme in spring.

Buddha’s Birthday itself is a public holiday. Banks and offices close, but shops, restaurants and attractions mostly stay open. Our guide to Korea’s public holidays for 2026 and 2027 has the full calendar.

On the day itself, temples across the country hang lanterns, and many offer visitors a free meal of bibimbap or rice. Jogyesa and Bongeunsa are the big Seoul options; the mountain temples in our Seoul temples top 8 are calmer and often more beautiful under their lantern canopies.

Jogyesa, the festival’s home

조계사 (Jogyesa) is the head temple of the Jogye Order, Korea’s largest Buddhist order, and the finish line of the parade. Weeks before Buddha’s Birthday its courtyard is roofed with thousands of hanging lanterns, and it becomes one of the most photographed places in the city, day and night. The temple is free to enter and open every day.

📍 Open in Naver Map

If you want the quieter side of Korean Buddhism after the noise, spend a night at a temple. Our templestay guide covers seven Seoul temples with English programmes.