Cambodia's year is set by water and by the dead. In April the solar new year turns and the pagodas fill with sand stupas; in autumn the ancestors are fed for fifteen days; and in November, when the Tonlé Sap changes direction, the country races boats in front of the royal palace.
Photo: Jeece69, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Three festivals hold the Cambodian year, and none of them is fixed to our calendar in the way a European one is.
The Water Festival, Bon Om Touk, sits on the full moon of the Khmer month of Kadeuk, in November, and marks the moment the Tonlé Sap stops flowing inland and turns back toward the Mekong. Pchum Ben runs fifteen days through the waning moon of the tenth month, in September or October, and is the time the dead are fed. The Khmer New Year is solar, in the middle of April, shared with Thailand, Laos and Myanmar but kept in its own way: sand stupas in the pagoda courtyard, water poured over the hands of elders, and games in the street.
UNESCO's lists hold seven Cambodian elements — the royal ballet and the Sbek Thom shadow theatre from 2008, the chapei lute, the Lkhon Khol masked theatre of Wat Svay Andet, the martial art kun lbokator and the krama scarf among them. They are arts and crafts rather than festivals, and they appear inside these three days as much as on a stage.
បុណ្យភ្ជុំបិណ្ឌ
For fifteen days at the end of the rains, Cambodians feed the dead. Families take food to the pagoda before dawn, monks chant through the night, and rice balls are set out or thrown for the spirits who have no one left to remember them. The last three days are a national holiday and the country goes home.
October 10 – 12, 2026Officially announced
បុណ្យអុំទូក
When the monsoon ends, the Tonlé Sap stops running inland and turns back toward the Mekong. Cambodia marks the turn with three days of boat racing in front of the royal palace in Phnom Penh, lit barges on the water at night, and flattened rice eaten under the full moon.
November 23 – 25, 2026Officially announced
បុណ្យចូលឆ្នាំថ្មី
Three days in the middle of April, when the harvest is in and the heat is at its worst. Houses are cleaned and lit for the new year's angel, mounds of sand are raised in the pagoda courtyards, elders are washed with scented water, and the street games that belong to no other week of the year come out again.
April 14 – 16, 2027Estimated