Guides · Fri 30 Oct 2026
Chiayi City International Band Festival 2026: two weeks of brass over New Year
Chiayi City's band festival reaches its 34th edition from Friday 18 December 2026 to Friday 1 January 2027: street parades, outdoor concerts and concert hall performances across a small, walkable city in the south. It began in 1993 with five school bands and is now the city's signature event. How the fortnight works, where it happens, and why it makes a good New Year trip away from Taipei.
The short answer: The Chiayi City International Band Festival 2026 runs from Friday 18 December 2026 to Friday 1 January 2027, organised by the Chiayi City Government through its Cultural Affairs Bureau, which has published the dates for the 34th edition. The programme mixes a street parade carnival, outdoor concerts, indoor concert hall performances and large evening shows, anchored around the Central Fountain roundabout and venues across the city. Most outdoor and parade programming is free. The full performance schedule is published by the bureau closer to December, so use this guide for the shape of the fortnight and the event page for the dated programme.
From five school bands to a city brand
The festival started in 1993 as a music festival built around performances by five school bands. The Tourism Administration's official calendar entry tells that origin plainly, and then describes what it grew into: more than two weeks of wind band parades, outdoor and indoor concerts and big evening performances, and the most distinctive and representative cultural event in Chiayi City. Chiayi has built its modern identity on this more than on any single sight. The city calls itself a home of wind bands, school ensembles are part of local life, and the December festival is when that identity is performed in the street for anyone who turns up.
How the fortnight is put together
Three formats carry the programme. The street parade is the public face: marching bands in formation through the city centre, with the Central Fountain area as the anchor point the Tourism Administration lists for the festival. Outdoor concerts and the large evening shows fill the squares and cultural venues, and indoor concerts, centred on the Cultural Affairs Bureau's concert hall, are where the invited ensembles play their serious repertoire. A city performance programme runs alongside, placing selected players in venues around Chiayi. Registration for Taiwanese school and community bands to join the parade and outdoor concerts closed in September 2026, which tells you the mix to expect: a deep bench of local school bands, the pride of the festival, alongside invited groups from elsewhere in Taiwan and abroad. The bureau publishes the running order, parade route details and concert listings as December approaches.
Why Chiayi, and why New Year
Most visitors meet Chiayi as a transfer point, the city where you change for the Alishan forest railway. The band festival is the strongest reason of the year to stop instead. Chiayi is compact and flat, the festival venues sit within walking distance of each other and of the station quarter, and December in the south is usually drier and milder than a Taipei winter. Running to 1 January also gives the fortnight a natural arc: arrive for the parade weekend energy in the days after 18 December, or come for the year end, when the festival's last concerts overlap with the city's New Year mood and the trip home on 1 January is against the flow. Pair the music with the city's other pleasures, turkey rice, the old cypress timber quarter around Hinoki Village and, if you have a spare day, the run up towards Alishan, and Chiayi holds a two or three night trip on its own.
Planning the trip
Chiayi is served by both the high speed rail, whose station sits outside the centre with shuttle buses into the city, and Taiwan Railways, whose station is in the middle of town and the better arrival for a festival weekend. Stay in the centre, near the station and the Central Fountain, and almost everything in this guide is on foot. Book the New Year end of the fortnight early, because the last nights combine festival audiences with holiday travellers heading for Alishan. For the parade itself, arrive before the start and pick a spot on a corner rather than mid block, so you see the formations turn. The event listing carries the confirmed dates, the official sources and the venue notes, and we will link the bureau's full programme there when it appears.
More reading on the articles page, or go straight to the events calendar.