All Ghana Festivals in May
Ghana Festival Calendar · Month 5 of 12
May Festivals in Ghana
One festival dominates this month, and it involves two rival warrior companies racing into the bush at dawn to catch a live antelope with their bare hands. Aboakyer at Winneba is the most physical festival in Ghana — and the most argued about.
Before you book flights
Almost no Ghanaian festival has a fixed Gregorian date. Most follow traditional calendars, lunar cycles or a decision taken by the traditional council a few weeks beforehand. Aboakyer traditionally falls on the first Saturday of May, which makes it one of the more dependable dates in the calendar — but the surrounding week of events is set locally.
Never book a non-refundable flight around a festival date you found online — including on this page. Confirm with the traditional council, the district assembly or a local contact first.
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Aboakyer — the Hunt, the Heritage
Two asafo companies, Tuafo and Dentsefo, race into the bush at first light to catch a live bushbuck with their bare hands. The winning company carries it back through Winneba to the chief, and the town erupts. Tradition holds the offering was once human, then a leopard, before the antelope — a substitution the festival still remembers. Physical, competitive, and genuinely unlike anything else in West Africa.
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Dipo — the Sacred Rite of Womanhood
The Krobo initiation rite, in the heart of its season. This is not a spectator festival — it is a rite of passage for the girls and their families, and one that is publicly debated within Ghana itself. If you attend, go by invitation through a local contact, follow every instruction, and treat photography as forbidden unless you are explicitly told otherwise.
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Akwasidae — Honouring the Ancestors
The one festival you can almost always catch. Akwasidae runs on the Akan 42-day calendar, so it lands in every month of the year — the Asantehene in full regalia at Manhyia, drumming, and the court of a kingdom that never stopped functioning. If your dates are fixed and you want one great festival, aim for this.
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Damba — the Festival of Royalty
The great festival of the north — drumming, horsemanship and chiefs in full regalia across Dagbon, Mamprugu and Gonja. It follows the Islamic calendar and shifts roughly eleven days earlier each year, working its way backwards through every month over time. Check the date for the year you are travelling rather than assuming any month.
Aboakyer — the argument nobody in the brochures mentions
A live wild animal is caught by hand and brought to the chief. Ghanaian conservationists and animal welfare groups have raised objections for years, the bushbuck population around Winneba is not what it was, and there have been seasons when no animal was caught at all. There have also been proposals within Ghana to modify the practice. None of that is mentioned on the tourism pages, so we will mention it here.
The counter-argument is equally real and deserves stating properly. Aboakyer is a centuries-old rite that already replaced earlier sacrifices — a tradition that has reformed itself once, from the inside. It carries the identity of the Effutu people and the structure of their asafo companies. Decisions about its future belong to Winneba, not to visitors, and certainly not to us.
What we would say to a traveller: know what you are going to see before you go. If a live animal being caught would distress you, the durbar and the procession on the days around the hunt give you the colour, the asafo companies and the town at full pitch without the capture itself.
Attending a festival respectfully
These are ceremonies, not shows
Durbars, purification rites and ancestral observances are religious and political occasions that happen to be public. You are a guest at something that would take place whether or not you came. Behave accordingly.
Asafo rivalry is serious
Tuafo and Dentsefo compete in earnest, and the crowds are partisan. Do not wear one company's colours unless you have been invited to, do not get between them, and follow the instructions of whoever is hosting you. Tempers have flared in past years.
Rites of passage are not for spectators
Dipo is a personal ceremony for the girls involved and their families, not an attraction. Attend only by invitation, never photograph without explicit permission, and do not treat participants as subjects.
Go with someone local
A local contact or guide turns a spectacle you watch into an occasion you understand — who is who, what is happening, when to stand. It is also how you avoid causing offence without realising it.
Organising a festival? Send us the dates and we will list it free of charge. This calendar is only as accurate as the information communities send us, and we would rather have it from you than from last year's news article. Get in touch.
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