/Seasonal Festivals
Seasonal Festivals of Svaneti
Svaneti’s calendar was never written for visitors — which is exactly its value. Lamproba’s birch torches in February, Svanetoba’s horse races and polyphony in late July, Gemo Fest in the winter square..
On this page
Overview
- Where
- Mestia and villages
- Includes
- Guide, entry, translation
- Duration
- Festival day
- Season
- Fixed dates — see below
- From
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Overview
Festivals nobody stages.
Lamproba falls in mid-February, its date following the lunar calendar. At night the men carry birch-bark torches through the snow to the family graves and bonfires burn beside the towers. It ties St George’s feast to something visibly older — ancestor remembrance in fire, in the season when Svaneti belongs only to itself.
Svanetoba takes the last weekend of July in Mestia: polyphonic song and circle dances, horse racing, wrestling and archery, food rows where every commune defends its kubdari, crafts and fireworks over the towers. Gemo Fest runs in winter on Seti Square, lately timed with the Freeride World Tour Georgia Pro — ski culture and supra culture shaking hands in one square.
The day includes
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- Local guide and translation
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- Explanation of the ritual
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- Festival food and drink
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- Introductions to local people
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- Transfers to the village
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- Photography guidance
BookingPer person
Dates follow the lunar and local calendars. Tell us your travel window and we will map what falls inside it — village church feasts pepper the whole year.
Related
Seasonal festivals of Svaneti — Lamproba, Svanetoba, Gemo Fest
The Bishop of Poti complained to Douglas Freshfield in 1887 that the Svans kept “the holy days of three religions.” Lamproba is what that beautiful stubbornness looks like at minus ten degrees: torchlight moving between graves, and a Christianity a thousand years old that never quite finished absorbing what came before it. Freshfield’s own porters, caught in fog on a glacier, sat down on the snow and prayed to the sun until it cleared.
The guide’s role is translation in the deep sense: what is happening, why, and how a guest joins without trespassing. Watch first, join when invited — invitations come faster than you expect. Festivals combine naturally with hiking or skiing, since the winter festivals fall inside the ski season.
Good to know
Graveside moments at Lamproba deserve discretion; the guide reads the room and tells you when the camera is welcome.
Related tours & guides
FAQ
Good to know
01Which festivals can I join?+
Lamproba in mid-February, Svanetoba on the last weekend of July, Gemo Fest in winter, plus village church feast days through the year. Send your dates and we will map what falls inside them.
02What if no festival matches my dates?+
Village feast days occur throughout the year and are smaller, quieter doors into the same tradition. There is nearly always something open.