Colorado Dragon Boat Festival

The Colorado Dragon Boat Festival in Sloan’s Lake Park has become a wildly popular cultural bonanza in Denver over the past 17 years. Denver’s 5280 Magazine declared it “one of Colorado’s greatest festivals.” This year’s Dragon Boat Festival, scheduled July 28–29, 2018, promises to be the biggest and best yet.

But let’s back up a step first. What is a dragon boat festival, anyway? Its roots go back thousands of years in China as the Duanwu Festival, which remains a traditional holiday in mainland China and Taiwan. Today, it has spread all over the globe.

WHAT TO EXPECT

This two-day festival centers around the dragon boat competition, with more than 50 teams of boaters clambering aboard intricate and colorful dragon boats and racing their way across Sloan’s Lake. But there’s a lot more than just the race. Check out these fun features:

• Five performing arts stages with over 100 shows

• An Asian Marketplace featuring gifts, artwork, crafts and novelties from Asia and the Pacific

• The Taste of Asia Food Courts showcasing some of the area’s best Asian restaurants and chefs preparing a weekend’s worth of dishes from a huge variety of Asian cuisines

• Dragonland, where kiddos can take part in hands-on learning projects, from origami to cut-out dragon masks

• A stage dedicated to urban arts where hip-hop dancers, spoken-word poets and even graffiti artists get to show off their skills all weekend long

• A traditional lion dance extravaganza

• A two-day partnership with Colorado Anime Fest