About Festivo
We wanted a calendar that would show regional folk festivals and traditional celebrations all over the world, useful while traveling or travel planning, but also delightful to check every day to see what is happening elsewhere. We didn't find anything with a global scope that wasn't focused on national holidays, so we started making one in early 2025. Actually, we made a bunch -- one per country.
Using several AI tools (mostly: Anthropic Claude Sonnet 3.7; OpenAi ChatGPT 4o, o1, 4.5; Google Gemini), we used the following prompt to illicit as large a list as possible of festivals to include on the calendar:
PROMPT
I want to compile an exhaustive list of folk festivals and traditional celebrations all over [COUNTRY NAME]. I am particularly interested in regional and very local folk festivals from all religious and cultural traditions in the country. Omit contemporary literary and music festivals, and also national holidays, but be as exhaustive as you can (aim for about 15 or 20 events, if possible). Arrange these in the form of a calendar with the start and end times noted in the calendar.
Be aware that the date of many traditional and religious festivals are sync to lunar dates so calculate the proper solar dates for 2025. If a festival spans multiple weeks, tell me the best day to go.
For each festival, give me a one-sentence description, as well one or two official or highly trust-worthy source links. In the description, also tell me the original date if it is from a non-Gregorian calendar.
Poinpoint the best location, village or town to witness each celebration if you wanted maximum festivities. Give me location information that I can import into a Google Map.
Give me three sets of data. First, give me a human-readable version, where the events are numbered. After I review that, if there are no errors, I will ask you to create a complete copy formatted for import into Google Calendar (ICS); and a KML file for these events so that I can import them into a Google Map. The ICS file and KML file must include all of the data you provide in the human readable version, encoded for semantic import.
We also used AI to build this website -- Cursor -- although the code is managed, reviewed, and deployed by humans.
Use this website to peruse the datasets we've cobbled together. You can subscribe to country-level calendars, and you can copy the maps to use as you like.
If you catch serious errors or have holidays to suggest for inclusion, please let us know. We'll happily review and add your suggestions. Thank you!