Airport Transfers to Bali
Pre-booked private transfers and shared shuttles for your arrival.
Bali Airport and Hotel Private Transfer Service
Free CancellationPrivate
From €30.42
Check Availability →
A month of daily performance at the Bali Arts Centre in Denpasar: gamelan competitions, Kecak fire dance, Barong processions, and ceremonial weaving on a scale that has no equivalent elsewhere on the island.
The Bali Arts Festival, known locally as Pesta Kesenian Bali, has run annually since 1979 and is organised by the Balinese provincial government as a showcase of the island's performing arts traditions. It takes place entirely at the Bali Arts Centre on Jalan Nusa Indah in Denpasar, a purpose-built cultural campus with an open-air amphitheatre, multiple performance pavilions, and exhibition halls. The festival opens with a grand procession from the Governor's Office to the Arts Centre, featuring hundreds of performers in ceremonial dress from all nine regencies of Bali. Each regency then presents its own programme across the month, meaning the content genuinely changes from week to week rather than repeating the same shows.
The daily programme runs from around 9am to 10pm and covers traditional Balinese dance forms including Legong, Barong, and Joged; gamelan orchestra competitions in which village groups compete for regional honours; woodcarving, textile, and painting exhibitions in the gallery buildings; and evening performances of large-scale dance-dramas. The Kecak performance, in which a chorus of 150 or more men chant the ramayana story without instruments, is performed several evenings a week and is significantly more atmospheric at the Arts Centre than at the tourist shows in Ubud. Most events are free to attend; the evening ticketed shows require advance booking through the Arts Centre box office or at the gate from around 6pm.
Party hostels within reach of 's main celebrations. Ranked by guest rating.
Day-by-day breakdown
The arts centre opens at 9am. Morning sessions are the quietest and best for the gallery buildings, which hold rotating exhibitions of traditional Balinese painting, woodcarving, and ceremonial textiles. Gamelan groups often rehearse in the open pavilions from around 10am; watching an unrehearsed gamelan session without a paying audience is genuinely different from a staged tourist performance. The food stalls along the eastern perimeter of the complex serve nasi campur and soto for 20,000–30,000 IDR.
Evening performances begin at 7pm in the main amphitheatre and the Arda Candra open-air stage. Arrive 30 minutes early to secure a good seat for the larger shows. The Kecak performance runs on specific evenings listed on the Arts Centre weekly schedule, posted at the main gate and on the official festival website. The full programme lasts 90 minutes to two hours. After the show, the food market outside the main gate stays open until midnight.
Pre-booked private transfers and shared shuttles for your arrival.
Getting to Bali Arts Festival from Yogyakarta , and Jakarta