Naadam (Inner Mongolia)
11 July 2026 · movable holiday — We chase the wind across the starry steppe! Faster, little horse!
Naadam is a traditional summer festival of the Mongolian peoples, known for the “three manly games”: wrestling, horse racing and archery. In Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region of China with a large Mongolian community, it is held in summer, most often in July or August. Exact dates are set locally and differ between areas and banners (local administrative units), so we give no single date. The contests are usually accompanied by songs, dances, music and shared meals. Horse races run across the open steppe, and the jockeys are traditionally children, often riding bareback or on light saddles. Mongolia’s Naadam is inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, though that inscription concerns Mongolia itself. The festival belongs to steppe life and the summer season, when pastures are richest and the night sky over the open grassland is wide and starry, which is why our little rider gallops among the stars.
Flying across the sky: An ethereal, bluish-silver star figure made of luminous dots and fine lines, like a constellation: a small Mongolian rider on a galloping horse, mane and tail trailing in streams of stars as it races across the sky
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