The Naadam Festival is the biggest and most important annual celebration in Mongolia. With a history of over two millennia, the event draws citizens and international visitors alike to enjoy the festivities.
1. Three manly games
“Naadam” means games in Mongolian, with the full name of the festival being “Eriin Gurvan Naadam”, translating to “three manly games”. They symbolise the three most important skills that nomad fighters needed to have: horse riding, archery and wrestling. And, despite the “manly” name, women are also allowed to participate in the games, except for the wrestling competition, while a fourth game, anklebone shooting, was added a few years ago.
Naadam is an expression of Mongolian people’s proud history, wonderful culture and customs created by themselves.
H.E. Luvsanvandan Bold, Ambassador of Mongolia to Belgium and the EU
1.1. Horse riding
The biggest horse riding competition as part of the Naadam Festival takes place in an open field outside the Mongol capital of Ulaanbaatar. Compared to the more common horse racing, where the track is about 2 km long, Mongolian horse riding is more like a marathon, with tracks varying from 15 km to 30 km long depending on the category.
The riders are children, as young as 5 years old, and usually not older than 13. But the purpose of the races is to test the skills of the horses rather than the those of the jockeys’. The competition is split in categories depending on the age of the horses and, at the end of each run, people gather around and try to touch the winning horse, as its sweat is believed to be lucky.
1.2. Archery
The main archery tournament takes place on the National Archery Field, next to the National Stadium in Ulaanbaatar. For the competitions, targets are formed out of small woven or wooden cylinders called “sur”, laid on the ground in rows of 2 or 3. While the central cylinders are marked in red, they do not bring extra points, however, hitting a sur only scores a point if the shot is strong enough to move the cylinder a certain distance from its initial place.
1.3. Wrestling
The wrestling tournament, held on the National Stadium, usually involves 512 fighters, sometimes 1024, participating in 9 or 10 elimination rounds, respectively. The wrestlers are listed and matched according to their rank from the top down for the 1st, 2nd, and 4th rounds, while for the 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th and potentially 10th rounds, the higher-ranking fighters can choose their opponents.
Dressed in traditional shoulder vests and shorts, the wrestlers are eliminated when any part of their body, except palms and feet, touch the ground. The fights get more competitive after the 5th round, as only the best wrestlers remain in the competition.
1.4. Anklebone shooting
Anklebone shooting is played in teams of 6 main players and 2 reserves. The players use a bullet bone, made of naturally fallen deer antlers, to shoot at target bones, that can be made of amber, tusk or horn bone. The target bones are placed on a wooden structure called “Zurkhai” that sits 4.7 metres away from the player’s chair, which is custom made for their size and knee height. The bullet bones are shot from a well-polished wooden support that the players hold on their knees.
2. Origins and history
Naadam’s origins date back over 2,000 years ago, when the three games served as war training for the Mongolian tribes. Some Chinese sources place the existence of the festivities in 209 BC, as celebration for the formation of the Hunnu Empire.
The 13th century “The Secret History of the Mongols”, the oldest surviving literary work in a Mongolian language, and the Stele of Genghis Khan, a stone dating back to the 1200s bearing the first known Mongolian script, also attest to the great conqueror celebrating his rule over the Mongolian tribes with Naadam-like festivities.
In 1921, Naadam was officially declared a national holiday and has been celebrated every year from 11 to 13 July ever since. Genghis Khan’s legacy is still present in the festival, the opening ceremony featuring traditionally dressed horse riders carrying the Nine White Banners. Usually kept in the Government Palace, the banners are made of white horse tail hair and were a peacetime emblem during the rule of the Khans.
In 2010, Naadam was inscribed on UNESCO’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. “Mongolian Naadam is inseparably connected to the nomadic civilization of the Mongols”, UNESCO says. “Everyone is allowed and encouraged to participate in Naadam, thus nurturing community involvement and togetherness. The three types of sports are directly linked with the lifestyles and living conditions of the Mongols. (…) The rituals and customs of Naadam also accentuate respect for nature and the environment.”
Besides the games, Naadam is a country-wide celebration of traditions and heritage. In the days around the Naadam Festival, Ulaanbaatar, as well as smaller cities across the country, are filled with cultural events, from the Mongolian Deel Festival, an annual celebration of Mongolian clothing, to special exhibits at museums and galleries and concerts.
3. July 2024
From 11 to 15 July 2024, Naadam will commemorate the 103rd anniversary of the Mongolian Revolution, the 818th anniversary of the establishment of the Mongol Empire and the 2,233rd anniversary of the establishment of the Hunnu Empire.
“This year Mongolia and European Union is commemorating the 35th anniversary of the establishment of the diplomatic relations. So, I have no doubt that the Naadam festival will offer good attractions for European tourists to experience Mongolian culture and traditions”, H.E. Luvsanvandan Bold, Ambassador of Mongolia to Belgium and the EU, told Travel Tomorrow.
“As an Ambassador of Mongolia in the Kingdom of Belgium and Mission Head to the European Union, I am proud to invite you to the Naadam festival in Mongolia or to the mini-Naadam festival that is organized in early July every year in the city of Antwerp by Mongolians living in Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg.”
