The Sound Hits You Before the Music Does
You hear the cicadas first. Then the drums — not from a stage, but from somewhere inside the treeline, muffled by humidity and leaf cover. The Sarawak Cultural Village sits at the base of Mount Santubong like it was placed there by someone who understood that music sounds different when the jungle is listening. The Rainforest World Music Festival runs June 26 to 28, 2026, and it’s been called Asia’s best world music festival for years. Whether that’s strictly true probably depends on what you compare it to, but the setting alone makes the argument hard to dismiss.
Thirty-five kilometers from Kuching. Three days. Somewhere between twelve and twenty acts per day, depending on how you count the workshop jams that spill over their time slots.
What Actually Happens Here
The festival runs on two tracks. Evenings belong to the outdoor main stage — big sound, big crowd, headline acts under open sky. But the daytime program is where the festival earns its reputation. Workshops happen inside traditional longhouses, and the format is less “masterclass” and more “let’s see what happens when a Sarawakian sape player and a West African kora musician sit in the same room.”
The sape, if you haven’t encountered it, is a lute-like instrument played by the Orang Ulu people. The sound is somewhere between a guitar and something you can’t quite place — reedy, unhurried, with a lot of space between the notes. Hearing it played inside the wooden resonance chamber of a longhouse is genuinely different from hearing a recording. I don’t want to oversell it, but it’s one of those things that’s hard to replicate outside its context.
The evening concerts are more conventional — world music festival fare, well-curated. African drum ensembles, Celtic folk groups, Latin jazz, Southeast Asian fusion acts. The quality is consistently high. The lineup for 2026 hasn’t been fully announced yet, so check closer to the date.
The Cultural Village Itself
The Sarawak Cultural Village is a living museum on normal days, showcasing traditional dwellings of the Iban, Bidayuh, Orang Ulu, and other ethnic groups native to Sarawak. During the festival, these structures become stages, backstage areas, and informal gathering spots where musicians and audience blur together.
It’s worth arriving early — not just for the workshops, but to walk through the village before the crowds. The buildings are actual reconstructions of traditional architecture, not theme-park approximations, and they’re set against rainforest that starts about ten meters from the back fences. Proboscis monkeys have been spotted in the trees nearby, though I wouldn’t count on that.
Getting There and Settling In
Fly into Kuching International Airport. Direct connections from Kuala Lumpur are frequent and cheap — AirAsia and Malaysia Airlines both run the route. Singapore has a few daily flights too. From the airport, the festival grounds are about 45 minutes by car, heading northwest toward Damai Beach.
Accommodation is the main logistical challenge. Kuching isn’t a huge city, and during festival week, hotels near Damai fill up fast. You have two options: stay near the venue at Damai Beach (convenient but limited choices and higher prices) or stay in Kuching city center (more variety, better food, but you’ll need transport to the grounds each day).
Search Kuching hotels on Agoda — booking two to three months ahead is reasonable. Last-minute isn’t impossible, but you’ll end up further from the action.
If you’d rather compare across platforms, Trip.com also lists Kuching properties and sometimes has package deals bundling flights from KL.
The Parts Nobody Warns You About
Sarawak is hot. Not “warm with a breeze” hot — properly equatorial hot, with humidity that makes your phone screen fog up when you step outside an air-conditioned car. The festival runs mostly outdoors. Bring the lightest clothes you own and accept that you’ll be damp by mid-morning.
Rain is not a possibility, it’s a certainty. This is literally a rainforest. The trails between stages get muddy, and the nice shoes you brought will not survive. Wear something you don’t mind ruining. Insect repellent is non-negotiable — apply it generously and reapply after sweating through the first coat, which will take about twenty minutes.
Phone signal gets spotty during evening concerts when everyone tries to post simultaneously. Download offline maps before you go. And the food stalls — which are excellent, genuinely excellent — are cash-heavy, so don’t rely entirely on your card.
Eating Your Way Through It
The festival food stalls serve Sarawakian specialties that are hard to find outside Borneo. Sarawak laksa is the headliner — a coconut-based curry noodle soup with shrimp paste that’s tangier and more complex than the Penang or Singapore versions. Kolo mee (dry noodles with pork and shallot oil) is the quick-eat staple. Both are priced reasonably — maybe RM 8-12 per bowl last I checked, but food prices drift upward during festival week.
If you’re in Kuching before or after the festival, find a kopitiam (traditional coffee shop) for breakfast. The kopi-o and roti canai routine is hard to improve upon.
Beyond the Festival
Extending the trip is worth it. Bako National Park is about an hour from Kuching by car and boat, and it’s one of the most accessible places to see proboscis monkeys in the wild. The trails range from easy boardwalks to properly challenging jungle hikes. Kuching’s waterfront — the stretch along the Sarawak River — is pleasant for evening walks, with a good concentration of restaurants and bars.
For something more ambitious, longhouse stays with Iban communities deeper in Borneo are available through local tour operators. These range from tourist-oriented (comfortable, scheduled activities) to genuinely remote. KLOOK lists several Sarawak day trips and activities if you want to browse options. KKday has Kuching and Borneo packages too, sometimes with festival-adjacent timing.
The Last Night
The festival closes on Sunday evening. The final act usually runs past midnight, and the walk back to the shuttle buses is dark and muddy and full of people humming songs they half-learned during the workshops. By the time you get back to Kuching, everything is closed except the 7-Eleven near the waterfront.
I bought an iced coffee there at 1 AM and sat on the curb listening to someone’s Bluetooth speaker playing a sape recording. It sounded completely different from the longhouse. Smaller. But still good.
