Annual Giant Puppet Parade
Annual Giant Puppet Parade
Once a year, Siem Reap’s streets fill with elephants, birds, dragons and creatures that never existed — all of them twelve feet tall, lit from within, and carried on the shoulders of the children who built them. The Giant Puppet Parade is the most joyful night in the city’s calendar, and it is completely free to watch.
The Giant Puppet Project began in 2007 as a community arts programme run through Phare Ponleu Selpak, the Cambodian arts NGO. In the weeks before the parade, students, artists, NGO groups and volunteers work together in workshops to build enormous puppets from bamboo, wire and paper. Every puppet is made by hand, and most are made by children — many from disadvantaged backgrounds for whom this is a first experience of making art at scale.
On parade night the puppets come out at dusk. The procession gathers near Wat Damnak and moves through the heart of the city — down Achar Sva Road, along Street 26 and Achar Hem Chieu Road, over the river and up to the Royal Independence Gardens — accompanied by drummers, dancers and stilt-walkers. It usually steps off around 6:30 in the evening and arrives at the gardens by about 8:00.
Each edition carries a theme. The 2026 parade, the sixteenth, was “Wild Parade!” — a celebration of Cambodia’s wildlife, from the iconic to the critically endangered. The themes are chosen to say something: about conservation, about heritage, about the country the children are inheriting.
For a visitor, this is one of the rare occasions where you see Siem Reap being itself rather than performing for tourists. Come early, find a spot along the route near the river, and let the crowd carry you. Bring a camera — but be prepared to forget to use it.
The parade is held annually in late February. Exact dates for the next edition are not yet confirmed; this page will be updated as soon as they are announced.
