See the Kandy Esala Perahera

What the experience is

The Esala Perahera is the annual festival of Kandy, the last royal capital of Sri Lanka. It honours the Sacred Tooth Relic of the Buddha, kept in the Temple of the Tooth beside the lake. The festival joins two older traditions: a ritual to ask the gods for rain, said to go back to the third century BC, and the procession of the tooth relic, which began after the relic was brought to the island from India in the fourth century AD. It took its present form under the kings of Kandy.

A perahera is a procession. Each night it leaves the temple and winds through the streets for several hours. It grows longer and more splendid as the festival goes on.

The order of the festival

The festival opens with ceremonies at the shrines of the four guardian deities, Natha, Vishnu, Kataragama and Pattini. Then come five nights of the Kumbal Perahera in the streets, followed by five nights of the Randoli Perahera, the grandest, named after the royal palanquins carried in it. The festival ends with a water-cutting ceremony and a final procession by day.

What you see

Whip-crackers come first, clearing the way, followed by fire-ball acrobats and men carrying Buddhist flags. Behind them come ranks of Kandyan drummers and dancers, and then the Maligawa Tusker, an elephant in lit and embroidered robes, carrying a golden casket that stands for the relic. The lay custodian of the temple, the Diyawadana Nilame, walks behind in the dress of a Kandyan chief. Each of the four shrines follows with its own elephants, musicians and dancers.

When to go

The dates follow the lunar calendar and fall in July or August, ending around the full moon of Esala. The Temple of the Tooth announces each year’s schedule: in 2026 the festival ran from 18 to 28 August, with the Kumbal Perahera on 18 to 22 August, the Randoli Perahera on 23 to 27 August, and the day procession on 28 August. The last nights of the Randoli Perahera are the finest and the most crowded. Dates for the next festival should be checked with the temple.

Good to know

Seats along the route are sold for each night and should be reserved, with a hotel room, months ahead; pavement places are taken by early afternoon. The procession starts after dark and lasts three hours or more. Kandy’s streets are closed to traffic on procession nights. The welfare of the festival’s elephants is a subject of public debate in Sri Lanka.

Why OKYTO recommends it

Nothing else shows Kandyan music, dance and ceremony on this scale. Santani, in the hills outside the city, is a calm base, and the festival fits a journey through the tea country by train.