Ghana's festival calendar

Why nobody can give you next year's dates

Most Ghanaian festivals do not sit on a fixed calendar date, and the ones that seem to are still subject to a decision by a traditional council. If you want to plan a trip around a festival, you fix your season first and confirm the exact date later.

Three different calendars are at work. Akan festivals such as Akwasidae run on the traditional forty-two-day cycle, which drifts steadily against the Gregorian year. Damba and other northern festivals follow the Islamic lunar calendar and therefore move roughly eleven days earlier every year. Homowo, Aboakyer and Hogbetsotso are tied to agricultural and historical reckoning, which anchors them loosely to a season and then leaves the precise weekend to the elders and the traditional council.

On top of that, a festival can be postponed. A period of mourning for a chief, a national event or a dispute within a traditional area can move or suspend a celebration, sometimes at short notice. That is not disorganisation; these are living institutions rather than tourism products, and they answer to their own authorities.

The practical rule is simple. Treat every month given below as an approximation, then ring the traditional council, the district assembly or the regional tourism office once your dates are within a couple of months. A local contact in the town concerned is better than any website, including this one.

Book the season. Confirm the date. Never do it the other way round.

Homowo: hooting at hunger in the Ga towns

Homowo is the harvest festival of the Ga people of Greater Accra, usually celebrated across August and September, and the name translates roughly as hooting at hunger — a public mockery of a famine the Ga survived generations ago. It is not one event on one day but a sequence running through the Ga towns over several weeks.

The part that catches visitors out comes first. In the weeks before Homowo, a ban on drumming and noise-making is observed in Ga areas, usually somewhere around May and June, so that the crops can grow undisturbed. During that period, loud music and drumming in the affected neighbourhoods are genuinely prohibited, and enforcement is a community matter. If you arrive in Accra expecting nightlife in a Ga quarter during the ban, you will find it subdued.

The festival itself brings the lifting of the ban, the return of families to the family houses, and the sprinkling of kpokpoi — a steamed maize dish eaten with palm nut soup — by the traditional priests and elders, who scatter it around the town as an offering. Then there is eating, visiting, drumming and the twin celebrations, where twins are honoured with their own rites. Streets in Ga Mashie, Teshie, Nungua and La fill with people in white.

The different Ga towns do not celebrate on the same day, which is the useful thing to know. Ask locally which town is celebrating on which weekend, and go to the one you have a connection to rather than the one nearest your hotel. Without a host you will be watching; with one you will be fed.

Chale Wote: the one you can just turn up to

Chale Wote is a contemporary street art festival held in Jamestown, Accra, usually in August, and it is the easiest major festival in Ghana for a visitor to attend because it is designed to be public. No traditional connection is required and nobody needs to invite you.

For a few days, the streets around the old colonial quarter — the lighthouse, the fishing harbour, the crumbling colonial buildings along High Street — are taken over by murals, installations, performance, film screenings, fashion, skating and live music. Artists paint on walls that stay painted afterwards, which is why Jamestown is worth walking through at any time of year.

It is crowded, hot and loud, and the crowd is young, Ghanaian and international in roughly equal measure. Go on foot. Driving into Jamestown during Chale Wote is a bad idea; park further out towards the ministries or in Osu and take a taxi or walk in along High Street. Carry water, carry small notes, and keep your phone somewhere that is not your back pocket.

The dates are announced by the organisers each year rather than fixed, and the programme changes substantially between editions. Check the festival's own announcements close to the time. It usually sits in August, which puts it in the drier, cooler spell the south gets around then — good weather for spending a day outdoors on a tarred street.

Damba: horses, drums and the northern chiefs

Damba is celebrated across northern Ghana — in Dagbon around Tamale and Yendi, in Gonja and in Mamprugu — and it moves through the Gregorian year because it follows the Islamic lunar calendar. It marks the birth of the Prophet, and over time it has become the great public display of northern chieftaincy.

What you will see is drumming of a kind you will not hear in the south: the hourglass drums played under the arm, the lunga and the gung-gong, in ensembles that accompany praise singing for the chief's lineage. The chief rides out on horseback, surrounded by his elders, sub-chiefs, drummers and a crowd on foot, in heavy embroidered smocks. Horsemanship matters here in a way it does not anywhere else in Ghana, and riders display in front of the chief's palace.

The celebration runs over several days with distinct stages, and the final day, when the chief processes in full state, is the one to aim for. It happens in the heat, in dust, with a large crowd and no seating arrangement for visitors, so go early, find shade and be prepared to stand.

Because the date shifts by about eleven days each year, no published month is reliable for long. Confirm with the palace, the traditional council or the regional tourism office in Tamale. If you are already going north for Mole, timing the trip around Damba turns a wildlife journey into something considerably richer.

Akwasidae: the one that comes round every six weeks

Akwasidae is held at Manhyia Palace in Kumasi roughly every six weeks, on a Sunday in the Akan forty-two-day cycle, which makes it by far the easiest major traditional event to build into a trip. You do not have to plan a year around it; you have to check which Sunday.

It is a day of ceremony in which the Asantehene sits in state to receive homage from sub-chiefs, and the blackened stools of past rulers are honoured. The public part takes place in the palace courtyard. Sub-chiefs arrive in procession under vast umbrellas that are spun and dipped by their bearers, with horn blowers, linguists carrying their staffs, and attendants. Gold is worn openly and in quantity. Kente is worn in the old way, draped over the shoulder, and the difference between a tourist-shop cloth and a chief's cloth is immediately obvious.

Go early, dress properly — no shorts, no hats in the presence of the chief, shoulders covered — and follow the crowd's cues on when to stand. Photography is generally tolerated but ask before photographing individuals, and do not walk in front of a procession to get a shot.

Adae Kese, the greater Adae, falls at longer intervals and is a much larger affair. If your dates happen to align with it, take it. Our guide to Kumasi and the Ashanti Region covers the palace, the museum, Kejetia market and the craft villages at Bonwire and Ntonso that make sense around the same visit.

Aboakyer: the deer hunt at Winneba

Aboakyer is the festival of the Effutu people of Winneba in the Central Region, usually held in early May, and it centres on two asafo companies competing to catch a live antelope with their bare hands. It is the most physically dramatic festival in Ghana and the one most likely to unsettle a squeamish visitor.

The companies — distinguished by their colours, flags and songs — leave before dawn for the bush, and the contest is to be the first to return with a live animal for presentation to the chief and the traditional priests. The return is chaotic and euphoric: running, singing, drumming, the animal carried through a crowd that has been waiting for hours. The presentation at the durbar follows, and the day ends with the chiefs in state.

Winneba sits directly on the Accra–Cape Coast road, roughly an hour and a half west of Accra past Kasoa in ordinary conditions and considerably longer on the festival weekend, when the road through town becomes impassable at times. Rooms in Winneba are taken well in advance; many people stay in Accra or Cape Coast and drive in very early.

Be honest with yourself about the hunt itself before you go. This is a living ritual with an animal at its centre, and it is not staged for visitors. If that will distress you, the durbar afterwards is the better part of the day to attend, and nobody will think anything of it.

Hogbetsotso: the Anlo Ewe exodus

Hogbetsotso is celebrated by the Anlo Ewe at Anloga in the Volta Region, usually on the first Saturday of November, and it commemorates the escape of the Anlo from the walled city of Notsie in what is now Togo. The story is the festival: the people are said to have walked backwards out of the city so their footprints pointed inwards, deceiving their pursuers.

The weeks before are given to reconciliation and cleaning. Disputes within families and between clans are meant to be settled, the lagoon and the town are cleaned, and there are purification rites at the coast. The festival itself culminates in a grand durbar at which the chiefs of the Anlo state sit in full regalia, receive homage and address the people, with drumming and the distinctive Ewe dance forms in between.

Anloga is out past Sogakope and Keta, on the strip of land between the sea and the Keta lagoon — roughly three hours from Accra in good conditions, more on the day. The drive along the Keta causeway is one of the best in the country, with water on both sides. Accommodation in the immediate area is limited, so most visitors base themselves at Keta or Sogakope and make an early start.

Combining Hogbetsotso with the rest of the Volta Region works well in November, when the rains are tailing off and the hills are still green. It is worth reading alongside our month-by-month guide to the best time to visit Ghana, since November is one of the strongest months for travelling generally.

The others worth knowing about

Ghana has dozens of festivals beyond the six best known, and several of them are as substantial as anything above. These are the ones most likely to coincide with an ordinary itinerary.

Fetu Afahye at Cape Coast, usually on the first Saturday of September, fills the town with processions, asafo companies and a durbar, and it is easy to combine with the castles. Bakatue at Elmina, usually in early July, marks the opening of the fishing season on the Benya lagoon with a regatta of decorated canoes, and it is one of the older recorded festivals on the coast. Odwira, celebrated in the Akuapem towns around Akropong and in other Akan states, usually falls around September or October and involves the purification of stools and a ban on eating new yam until the rites are complete.

In the Western Region, Kundum is celebrated by the Ahanta and Nzema over a long period and moves from town to town. At Ada, Asafotufiami brings the Dangme asafo companies together in a re-enactment of past wars, usually around August. Ngmayem, the Krobo harvest festival around Odumase, generally falls in October.

Then there is Kwahu at Easter, which is not a traditional festival at all but has become one of the largest gatherings in the country. Young people from Accra and Kumasi fill the Kwahu ridge towns — Obo, Mpraeso, Atibie, Nkawkaw below — for several days of street parties, and paragliding from the escarpment has become the headline attraction. Every room on the ridge is booked months ahead and the roads up are slow.

How to attend without getting it wrong

The rules at a traditional festival are mostly about deference to chiefs and elders, and they are easy to follow once you know them. Getting them right is the difference between being a guest and being an inconvenience.

Dress properly. Cover your shoulders and knees, leave shorts and beachwear at the hotel, and take your hat off in the presence of a chief. If you have Ghanaian cloth, wear it. At a durbar, chiefs and elders are seated in state and there is an order to the space; sit or stand where you are directed, and do not cross the open ground in front of a seated chief.

Use your right hand for giving, receiving and greeting, and greet from the right when you approach a row of seated people. Do not offer a handshake to a chief unless it is offered to you first. If you are introduced to an elder, a slight bow from the waist is appropriate and costs nothing.

On photography, ask. Festivals are photographed heavily and there will be press and official photographers, but a camera pushed into someone's face during a ritual is resented here as anywhere. Never photograph a shrine, a priest in ritual dress or a sacred object without explicit permission, and accept a refusal without argument. Drones need permission and are frequently not welcome.

Bring small notes. You may want to make a contribution when a collection passes, tip a drummer, or buy food from the stalls that appear around every festival ground. Our guide to Ghanaian etiquette, greetings and language goes through the rest of it, including the handful of Twi, Ga and Ewe phrases that change how you are received.

Planning a trip around a festival

A festival changes three practical things about a town: every room is taken, the roads are slow or closed, and prices firm up. Plan for all three and the day is a pleasure; ignore them and you spend it in a car.

Book accommodation as soon as the date is confirmed, and expect that the nearest town to the festival ground will fill first. For Aboakyer, that often means staying in Accra or Cape Coast rather than Winneba. For Hogbetsotso, Keta or Sogakope rather than Anloga. For Kwahu at Easter, months ahead or not at all. For Akwasidae in Kumasi, the recurrence works in your favour and ordinary hotel availability generally holds.

Travel the day before wherever you can. Festival mornings on the approach roads are slow, and the Accra–Cape Coast road through Kasoa and Winneba is congested at the best of times. Arriving the previous evening also means you see the preparations, which are often more interesting than the formal programme.

Start early on the day itself. Traditional events begin when they begin, published times are approximate, and the alternative to arriving early is standing at the back of a large crowd in strong sun for several hours. Take water, a hat for the walk in, something to sit on, and somewhere safe for your phone. Eat before you go; food at the ground is plentiful but the queues are not.

If you want to build a trip around one

The hard part of a festival trip is not the festival — it is confirming the real date, finding rooms in a town where everything went months ago, and getting through roads that are closed. Ghana Travel & Tour checks dates with the traditional council or district assembly for the towns on your route as a matter of course, arranges accommodation in the nearest workable town rather than the fullest one, and puts you with a driver who knows which approach road will still be moving.

If you have a festival in mind, start with our guided tours. Quotes are itemised line by line and come from a named trip manager you can reach directly.

Questions people ask