🎍Galungan

About Galungan

Galungan is the most important holiday in the Balinese Hindu calendar, celebrating the victory of dharma (order and good) over adharma (chaos and evil). Balinese believe that during the festival the spirits of ancestors descend to revisit their living descendants, who welcome them home with prayers, offerings and temple visits across a ten-day period of festivity. It is a joyful, deeply spiritual time that brings families together.

The festival's signature sight is the penjor: tall, gracefully arched bamboo poles decorated with palm leaves, flowers, fruit and rice, planted outside every home and lining the island's roads as a symbol of gratitude and prosperity. Temples and family compounds fill with elaborate offerings, women carry towering fruit arrangements on their heads, and the whole island takes on a festive glow. The celebration culminates ten days later in Kuningan.

Galungan follows Bali's 210-day Pawukon calendar rather than the Gregorian year, so it shifts through the calendar and usually occurs twice in a single year. The live countdown above tracks the next Galungan automatically. Add this countdown to your own page so you never miss the day the penjor rise across Bali.