Seoul International Fireworks Festival Ranks No. 1 Overall Among 1,452 Festivals Nationwide; Chunhyang Festival Tops “Attractiveness”

Yanolja Research (Director: Soocheong Jang), a research institute specializing in the travel and tourism industry, held the 2026 Korea Representative Festival Evaluation Seminar on August 11 in collaboration with Purdue University’s Center for Hospitality and Retail Industries Business Analytics (CHRIBA) and Kyung Hee University’s H&T Analytics Center (Director: Kyuwan Choi). At the seminar, the organizations officially unveiled the Korea Festival Attractiveness Index (hereinafter, the “NOL Korean Festival Index”), Korea’s first consumer-centric festival evaluation index based on social big data.

The seminar was organized to address the limitations in qualitative performance despite quantitative expansion—a situation in which the number of festivals and related budget expenditures have risen rapidly nationwide, while local resident participation rates and tourism spending per capita have instead declined. It also aimed to present evidence-based alternatives for strengthening the global competitiveness of Korean festivals through objective, data-driven assessment.

Introducing a Consumer-Centric Festival Evaluation Model

The evaluation was conducted in collaboration with VAIV Company Inc. and covered 1,452 festivals nationwide. News content, which tends to contain a high proportion of promotional material, was excluded from the analysis. Instead, unstructured data from the most recent 12-month period (July 2025–June 2026) were collected from major social channels, including YouTube, Instagram, blogs, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and online communities. An AI-based sentiment analysis model was then applied to assess not only how widely each festival was known, but also how positively visitors evaluated their actual festival experiences.

The NOL Korean Festival Index consists of two dimensions: Awareness and Attractiveness. Awareness measures how widely a festival is known and the degree of attention it receives, based on its buzz volume in social data. Attractiveness measures consumers’ evaluations of their actual festival experiences, based on the proportion of positive sentiment identified through sentiment analysis. The final index assigns an equal 50% weight to each dimension.

In other words, by simultaneously measuring “how well known a festival is” and “how much people who experience it actually like it,” the index represents a shift from the conventional supplier-centric approach to festival evaluation toward a consumer experience-centric model.

“From Supplier-Centric, Quantitative, Administrative, and Domestic-Oriented to Consumer-Centric, Qualitative, Market-Oriented, and Global”

In the first presentation, Soocheong Jang, Director of Yanolja Research and Professor at Purdue University, proposed four paradigm shifts necessary to take Korean festivals to the next level: ① supplier-centric → consumer-centric, ② quantitative expansion → qualitative enhancement, ③ administrative logic → market logic, and ④ domestic orientation → global orientation.

To put these shifts into practice, Chang proposed five key innovation initiatives: ① institutionalizing a consumer experience-centric evaluation framework; ② consolidating, restructuring, or discontinuing festivals that consistently underperform; ③ establishing permanent, autonomous private-sector organizations supported by multi-year budgets and professional personnel; ④ eliminating blind spots in the evaluation and disclosure of festivals with budgets below KRW 300 million; and ⑤ developing globally recognized festival brands by selectively concentrating resources on a small number of highly competitive representative festivals.

Seoul International Fireworks Festival Ranks No. 1 Overall; Chunhyang Festival Leads in “Quality of Experience”

In the second presentation, Kyuwan Choi, Professor at Kyung Hee University, presented the major findings of the NOL Korean Festival Index and key characteristics by festival type.

The analysis found that the Seoul International Fireworks Festival with Hanwha ranked No. 1 overall among 1,452 festivals nationwide. Despite being held for just one day, the festival received the highest overall evaluation, driven by overwhelming social media attention and broad public awareness.

It was followed at the top of the rankings by the Jinhae Gunhangje Festival, which combines cherry blossom scenery with the historical identity of a naval port city, and the Chunhyang Festival, which achieved a perfect 10.0 in Attractiveness on the strength of its traditional narrative and the nighttime scenery of Gwanghalluwon Garden. The Seoul Lantern Festival and Boryeong Mud Festival also demonstrated strong competitiveness, supported respectively by urban nighttime scenery and differentiated killer content.

Notably, the analysis confirmed that “well-known festivals” and “festivals that deliver good experiences” do not necessarily coincide. By festival type, fireworks and lantern festivals, which use light as their central theme, recorded the strongest performance.

Music festivals, by contrast, had the highest average Awareness but relatively low Attractiveness, revealing a “high-awareness, low-attractiveness” structure in which satisfaction with the on-site experience failed to match the level of buzz and lineup appeal. WonderLivet ranked 3rd in Awareness but only 99th in Attractiveness.

Conversely, a number of festivals built around traditional cultural heritage or local specialties emerged as “hidden gems,” recording relatively high experience satisfaction despite lower levels of Awareness. The Camellia Flower & Webfoot Octopus Festival ranked 44th in Attractiveness and 100th in Awareness, while the Soraepogu Festival ranked 21st in Attractiveness and 61st in Awareness. These festivals were assessed as having substantial room for further growth if their promotion and branding are strengthened.

By season, autumn festivals accounted for the largest share of the festivals analyzed, with 90 festivals (45%), highlighting intensifying competition caused by the concentration of festivals in the fall and the need for strategies to achieve greater seasonal dispersion.

Four Strategies for Revitalization: Local Distinctiveness, Clear Targeting, Branding, and Private-Sector Expertise

Professor Choi proposed four strategies for strengthening the competitiveness of Korean festivals: ① developing festivals and restructuring festival portfolios around distinctive local assets, differentiated experiences, and killer content; ② implementing data-driven customer segmentation and clearly defined value propositions for each target segment; ③ adopting customized promotion and branding strategies according to each festival’s levels of Awareness and Attractiveness; and ④ establishing sustainable operating systems and performance management led by specialized private-sector organizations.

In particular, Choi emphasized the need to move away from the concept of a “festival for everyone”, clearly define who each festival is for, and design differentiated value that only those target customers can experience. He also stressed the need to transition away from annual administrative cycles and operations dependent on rotational government staffing, toward a structure in which festivals are developed continuously through specialized private-sector organizations and multi-year planning.

Policy Implications: “Korea Needs a World-Class K-Festival That Can Only Be Experienced in Korea”

Soocheong Jang, Director of Yanolja Research, explained, “The NOL Korean Festival Index goes beyond simply ranking festivals. By using data to assess the experiences and emotional appeal that tourists actually perceive, it serves as a strategic map showing where each festival’s strengths lie and what needs to be improved.”

He added, “To enhance the global competitiveness of Korean festivals, we need to go beyond showcasing Korean culture overseas and build the power to draw travelers from around the world to the specific regions in Korea where these festivals are held.”

Commenting on the government’s recent initiative to develop a “Korean version of Coachella,” Chang also suggested that, rather than expanding it into an event that tours overseas, it should be firmly rooted in a specific location in Korea and continuously build a strong sense of place, ultimately developing into a destination festival that motivates people from around the world to travel to Korea specifically to attend it.

“World-class festivals such as Coachella, Oktoberfest, and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe have become deeply rooted in particular locations and developed into tourism assets that draw visitors from around the world to those destinations,” Chang said. “Korea should likewise leverage the competitiveness of K-culture to cultivate a globally recognized flagship K-festival that can only be experienced by coming to Korea.”

Meanwhile, Yanolja Research plans to publish the NOL Korea Festival Index annually to continuously track changes in Korea’s festival market and develop the index into a data infrastructure that local governments, public institutions, and private festival operators can use for festival development and policymaking.

For this year’s evaluation, festivals ranked 1st through 150th overall were classified into three tiers, while those ranked 151st through 200th were designated as “Candidate Festivals,” without disclosure of their individual rankings. Detailed rankings and analysis from the 2026 NOL Korean Festival Index are available on the official Yanolja Research website.

[Appendix] 2026 Korea Festival Attractiveness Index (NOL Korean Festival Index): Top 20 Overall Rankings