This year’s Kurultaj – Hungarian Tribal Assembly in Bugac promises to be an unmissable family event
In 2024, the Hungarian-Turanian Association, founded by the Hungarian-Turanian Foundation, will organise the Kurultaj – Hungarian Tribal Assembly in Bugac, the largest traditional festival in the Carpathian Basin and the largest world meeting of Hun and Turkic peoples. Kurultaj 2024 will feature new programme elements and major new scientific exhibitions for visitors interested in the ancient Hungarian past and the culture of our Turkic cousins.
The Kurultaj commemorates Hungarian ancestors and great figures of Hungarian history and has become a connecting link that can unite the entire Hungarian community in the Carpathian Basin. Through its kinship with the horse nomadic peoples of Steppe, the festival is also a great tribal gathering, a cultural meeting of the Eastern peoples related to the Hungarians.
More than 25 related nations will be present at the three-day Kurultaj, and more than 50 programmes will be organised, giving a taste of the culture of the representatives of the Hun-Turkic peoples. More than 100 teams will come to Bugac at the invitation of the Turanian Association, with traditionalists from Transylvania, Transcarpathia, the Highlands and the South.
The celebrations will include a traditional parade, fighting demonstrations, equestrian competitions and contests, archery programmes, exhibitions on the Hungarian-Hungarian heritage, folk music programmes.
New events and established programme elements
In addition to the popular programme elements, the 2024 event will feature a number of novelties (new scientific exhibitions, lectures and new stage performers).
One of the most spectacular will be a nomadic wedding, where a nomadic marriage will be recreated in an imaginary scene, with all the interesting elements of a nomadic marriage, including elements of Hungarian folklore, from the proposal of a girl to the abduction, the wedding ceremony and the feast.
Another novelty is the renewed fair. For more than a decade, the craft fair has been one of Hungary’s largest and most sophisticated craft fairs, showcasing the crafts of the time in practice, but also bringing traditional elements into the 21st century.
The fair now features an impressive entrance gate, reminiscent of the Silk Road stations of Central Asia. This structure, for which construction work has already begun, is similar in appearance to the early medieval structures still found in Uzbekistan today. At the base of the walls, enclosed by four towers, are four impressive exhibitions, both individually and in themselves.
Alongside selected ethnographic exhibitions from Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan, the work of the famous Hungarian traveller Ármin Vámbéry is also on display in a show organised with the support of the Hungarian Geographical Museum.
The most important information related to the event can be found on the official Kurultaj website kurultaj.hu and on the Kurultaj-Hungarian Tribal Assembly Facebook page.
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