Easter Island Events

The island’s calendar is dominated by a single fortnight that the whole community spends the year preparing for.

Tapati Rapa Nui — the first two weeks of February

A festival of Rapa Nui culture staged as a competition between two clans, each backing a candidate for festival queen and accumulating points across a long programme of events. The contests are the substance: haka pei, in which competitors slide head-first down the 45-degree slope of Maunga Pu’i on banana-trunk sledges at considerable speed; the tau’a rapa nui triathlon across the Rano Raraku crater lake, run with reed floats and bunches of bananas carried on a pole; body painting in traditional takona designs, judged on the accuracy of the symbols and the carrier’s ability to explain them; stone carving, wood carving, fishing, horse racing, singing and dance. It closes with a torchlit parade through Hanga Roa. Established in the 1970s as part of the cultural revival, it is now the island’s central annual event and is genuinely for the islanders rather than for visitors — which is exactly why it is worth seeing. Book flights and rooms many months ahead.

Day of the Rapa Nui Language — November

A week of events in schools and the community marking and promoting the language.

Sunrise at Ahu Tongariki — year round

Not a festival, but the island’s fixed daily ritual: people gather before dawn at the fifteen statues to watch the sun come up behind them, and around the summer solstice it rises directly behind the platform.

Annexation Day — 9 September

Marked each year, and a date on which the island’s relationship with Chile is publicly discussed.