What is Mongolia’s Naadam Festival like?

What to Expect at Mongolia’s Naadam Festival

The word “Naadam” means festivity in Mongolian and is not reserved for what we call “ Mongolia’s Naadam Festival ” today. Mongolia’s Naadam Festival takes place in the summertime, a short period where the usually severe Mongolian weather gives everyone a break and makes the people of Mongolia and its nature want to jubilate! While the month of June is still spent recovering (and regaining some of the layers of fat on domestic animals and wildlife alike), it is also a month of raising the next generation. The vegetation is also in bloom, early enough for fruits to mature during the summer. By July, the grass has grown high, the weather is beautifully warm, and the work with the offspring has lessened. The nomads are now in their summer camps, the children are back from schools and universities, the fermented mares’ milk is plentiful, and the next winter is still a while away. Time to celebrate and prepare for the famed Mongolia’s Naadam Festival and Festivities!

Mongolia’s Naadam Festival – The Three “Manly Sports”; Wrestling, Horse Racing, and Archery

Wrestling is a knock-out setting in Mongolia’s Naadam Festival, where matches take place simultaneously. So, space allowing, there may be 128 simultaneous matches in the first round (alternatively in two sessions, 64 matches per session). Once someone touches the ground with anything except his feet, the match is over, so the number of matches goes down quickly. In the second round, there would only be 24 matches left and by the third round, only 12. While most fights are over very quickly, others seem to take ages, with the competitors hooked up with one another not moving much for extended periods of time. They are sometimes encouraged to make the next move by a friendly slap on their bottom from their coach. Whoever is not involved in participating actively in the match is excited to watch and comment.

As for the horse races during Mongolia’s Naadam Festival – they takes place in a wide-open space and only the finishing line is known to everyone. Spectators meet at the finish line, eagerly waiting for the crowd of horses – and the children riding them, girls and boys alike – to arrive. Hours earlier, Mongolia’s Naadam Festival organizers will have taken the competitors to an undisclosed location up to 40km away from the finish line. The secrecy about the starting point is to prevent cheaters from joining the race along the way.

In Mongolia’s Naadam Festival horses compete in different age categories and the horses’ breeders win the prizes, the medals usually decorating their gers. A nice feature is that not only the fastest horses that come in first are rewarded, but the last horse also gets a prize too.

While archery lost popularity for a bit at Mongolia’s Naadam Festival, in recent years it has come back. Although it is counted as a “manly sport”, women compete alongside men. The targets are small cylinders, braided from rawhide, placed next to each other, sometimes with a second row above. The bows are traditionally manufactured composite bows, made from wood, bark, shagreen and bone – the craft and art of their making is a secret passed down within the family. Their predecessors are notoriously famous for their strength – arrows fired by Mongolian warriors in ancient times penetrated the armor of the Knights of the German Teutonic Order. The arrows used in the competitions are made from birch wood, have feathers fletching from vulture feathers and walrus-ivory heads.

What is Mongolia’s Naadam Festival like in the countryside?

Mongolia’s Naadam Festival in rural areas are surrounded with vehicles to give structure to that joyous feeling of the summer and community celebration. They create a forum where men compete with one another, show what they are capable of and, at the same time, follow clear rules that prevent the opposing party from turning sour. Everyone takes part in some way: all men are invited to wrestle, the children are racing horses, the old are coaching and refereeing or, if they happen to wear a pair of thick patched up glasses, they would probably be the one leading the athletes and spectators through the ceremony with a quaky microphone. The women spectators show off their best dresses, walking around in groups, with their handbags and pairs of heavy silver stirrups in their hands. Archery is less common outside of the Ulaanbaatar Naadam, but competitions are also held here or there in the countryside.

What is Mongolia’s Naadam Festival like in Ulaanbaatar?

Ulaanbaatar is Mongolia’s “National Naadam Festival” and is indeed the country’s most important annual celebration. The National Naadam’s opening ceremony is held on the historic anniversary of the foundation of the state on July 11th. It was on this day, in 1921, that Mongolia fought a victorious battle and gained independence from China, with the help of the Russian red army. Locals as well as international dignitaries are invited, and all of Ulaanbaatar partakes in this national spectacle. Seats are hard to get but the reward is big – as you get to enjoy the most spectacular show of wonderful consumes and skills that are performed by hundreds of artists in Ulaanbaatar’s stadium. The archery competition takes place outside the stadium – and all the way out of town for some 30km to the west of the stadium – in the wide-open steppe Khui Doloon Khudag is where the horse races are held. Everyone travels back and forth between the locations. Meanwhile, after the spectacular opening ceremony of Mongolia’s Naadam Festival (on the morning of the 11th), the wrestling begins in the stadium, stretching for many hours, only to be concluded in the afternoon of the 12th. Until then, there is plenty of time to see archery, horse races, to be stuck in traffic, wait for your table free at the restaurant, or to hopelessly seek a decent washroom.

Combine Mongolia’s Naadam Festival with One of Our Fine Nomads Tours!

We invite you to experience all this and more in our wonderful Naadam programs! The festival can be combined with jeep tours to Karakorum or the Gobi Desert (via a 90-minute flight to Dalanzadgad) or activities like camel and horseback riding for a few days in the Khan Khentii National Park.

Here are a handful of tours with Mongolia’s Naadam Festival included: