The Smell of Incense at Five in the Morning
The first thing you notice is not the decorations. It is the smoke — thin threads of incense drifting out of every doorway, every compound wall, every roadside shrine before the sun is fully up. Then you see the penjor. Hundreds of them, bamboo poles curved like fishing rods under the weight of woven coconut leaves, fruits, rice cakes, and flowers, lining both sides of every village road in Bali. Each one bends toward the street from a different family compound, and no two look exactly alike.
This is Galungan, which falls on April 15, 2026 — the most sacred day in the Balinese Hindu calendar. It marks the beginning of a 10-day period ending with Kuningan on April 25, during which ancestral spirits are believed to return to earth. The whole island shifts into a different gear.
A Calendar That Doesn’t Work Like Yours
Galungan follows the Pawukon, a 210-day cycle that has no equivalent in Western calendars. Instead of happening once a year, it comes around roughly every seven months. The dates shift each cycle, which is why you can’t just Google ‘Galungan date’ and expect consistency from year to year.
The April 15 date in 2026 places it during Bali’s transition from wet to dry season. Mornings are usually clear, afternoons might get a shower, evenings cool down nicely. Not a bad time to visit, weather-wise — though honestly any time during Galungan is worth the trip regardless of what the sky is doing.
What Happens in the Days Before
Galungan is not a single-day event. The preparation starts days in advance and each day has a name and a purpose.
Penyekeban, three days before, is when families start cooking and preparing offerings. The name literally means ‘the day of covering’ — green bananas get sealed into clay pots to ripen in time for the ceremonies. It is a kitchen day. The whole compound smells like steamed rice flour.
Penyajaan, two days out, is for making jaja — traditional rice cakes in colors that look almost too vivid to eat. Pink, green, yellow, shaped into flowers and animals. This is mostly women’s work, and the skill involved is considerable.
Penampahan, the day before Galungan, is the most intense. Penjor go up. Offerings get assembled into towering arrangements. Pigs are slaughtered for the feast. The energy is hard to describe — part solemn preparation, part controlled chaos. If you are visiting and want to see the ‘making of’ rather than just the finished product, Penampahan is the day to walk through the villages.
Then Galungan morning itself: families in full traditional dress — white lace kebaya for women, white udeng headcloth for men — walking to their family temple, then the village temple, then wherever else they need to pray. The roads are simultaneously packed and quiet. Everyone is moving with purpose.
Manis Galungan, the day after, is the social one. Families visit each other. The roads fill with motorbikes carrying entire families in ceremonial dress, baskets of offerings balanced on laps. It is chaotic and beautiful and slightly terrifying if you are trying to drive.
Kuningan, ten days after Galungan, closes the cycle. This is when the ancestors return to heaven. Families prepare yellow rice offerings — kuningan comes from kuning, meaning yellow. Many Balinese consider this the most spiritually potent day for receiving blessings.
Where to Actually Go
Ubud is the easy answer, and it is not wrong. The main road through town gets spectacular penjor, the Royal Palace area hosts visible ceremonies, and the surrounding villages — Peliatan, Mas, Tegallalang — are less crowded but equally decorated. If this is your first Galungan, Ubud is a solid base.
That said, Ubud during Galungan is also Ubud during peak season. Hotels fill up. Traffic gets worse than usual, which is saying something for a town whose traffic is already its worst feature.
Denpasar is worth considering if you want the less-curated version. The ceremonies at Pura Jagatnatha are massive, and the neighborhood temples across the city host their own celebrations that feel less performative precisely because fewer tourists show up. The tradeoff: Denpasar is not charming in the way Ubud is. It is a working city.
Batuan and Batubulan, south of Ubud, are known for artistic traditions — woodcarving, stone carving, painting. Their penjor tend to be more elaborate and creative than average, and the temple ceremonies include gamelan performances that are genuinely for the community, not staged.
Besakih Temple on the slopes of Mount Agung is the big one — Bali’s mother temple. Galungan ceremonies here are extraordinary. The practical issue: it is a long drive up the mountain, the parking situation is a mess, and the temple complex is enormous enough that you can spend half a day just navigating it. Go early if you go at all.
The Penjor, Up Close
The penjor deserves its own section because it is the single most visually distinctive element of Galungan. Each one is a tall bamboo pole, curved at the top so the decorated end arcs over the road. The curve is supposed to represent Mount Agung — the sacred mountain — and the flow of divine prosperity down to the human world.
The decorations are woven young coconut leaves (janur), ears of rice, fruits, traditional cakes, and ornamental cloth. Some families go minimal. Others go elaborate to the point of architectural ambition. There is no official competition, but everyone knows which family on the street made the best one.
Walking or cycling through a village where every compound has put up a penjor — the tips swaying slightly overhead, the decorations rustling — is genuinely one of those experiences that does not translate to photographs. The scale of it, the repetition, the fact that every single one was made by hand by a different family — you have to be in it.
Things Nobody Warns You About
Temple etiquette is strict. Sarong and sash required for entry — you can rent them outside most temples, but bringing your own is better. Women who are menstruating are traditionally asked not to enter. Shoes come off on temple platforms. This is not optional or flexible.
The traffic. Galungan Day and Manis Galungan are the worst. Entire families are crisscrossing the island visiting temples and relatives. Some roads close for processions with no warning. Build in extra time for everything. Twice as much as you think.
Offerings on the ground. Small woven baskets called canang sari appear on every surface — sidewalks, doorsteps, dashboards, ATM machines. They are sacred. Do not step on them, kick them, or move them. Watch where you walk.
Photography. The Balinese are generally welcoming but ask before photographing anyone in prayer. Do not step over offerings for a better angle. Do not climb on temple walls. Common sense, but worth stating.
Accommodation. This is also peak domestic travel — Indonesian tourists visit Bali for Galungan too. Book early. If you are flexible on location, areas outside the Ubud-Seminyak corridor tend to have more availability.
For hotels, Agoda tends to have the best selection for Southeast Asian properties, especially the smaller Balinese guesthouses that do not always list on global platforms. Worth checking Trip.com as well for package deals if you are booking flights and accommodation together.
Not a Performance
The thing about Galungan that sets it apart from festivals that attract tourists is this: it is not for you. It is not staged, ticketed, or scheduled for visitor convenience. Nearly 4.5 million Balinese Hindus participate. Every family. Every compound. Every temple on the island.
You are welcome to witness it — the Balinese are remarkably generous about sharing their ceremonies with respectful visitors. But the ceremonies happen whether you are there or not. The gamelan plays for the gods. The offerings are for the ancestors. The penjor are for the family’s devotion, not your Instagram.
That is also what makes it worth seeing. If you want a cultural experience that has not been optimized for tourist consumption, Galungan is one of the few remaining large-scale religious observances where that is genuinely still the case.
Want a guided cultural experience to make sense of what you are seeing? KLOOK and KKday both offer Bali temple and ceremony tours. Not cheap, but useful if you want someone to explain the rituals in real time rather than piecing it together from blog posts afterward.
After Kuningan
The penjor stay up for a while after the festival ends — they dry out slowly, turning from green to golden brown. By the time they come down, the bamboo has bleached in the sun. Kids sometimes play with the leftover decorations.
I remember walking past a compound the morning after Kuningan. A woman was sweeping up incense ash from the family temple while her daughter chased a chicken through the offerings that had not been cleared yet. The penjor out front was already leaning slightly. Nobody seemed in a hurry to take it down.
