One of Africa's largest music festivals fills Rabat's Atlantic seafront and the banks of the Bou Regreg river for ten days each June: 2.5 million attendees, free outdoor stages, and a programme that runs from Gnawa trance music to international pop headliners.
Rabat is Morocco's capital, a city of 600,000 people on the Atlantic coast at the mouth of the Bou Regreg river, with its old medina and Kasbah of the Udayas on the north side of the river and the more modern administrative city to the south. Most travellers pass through on the way to Marrakech or Fès and do not stop long enough to register what is here. In May and June, that oversight has a specific cost: missing Mawazine.
Mawazine (full title: Festival Mawazine — Rhythms of the World) is Africa's largest music festival by attendance, drawing around 2.5 million people over ten days. Unusually for a festival of this scale, the majority of the programming is free. Six outdoor stages across the city run simultaneously each evening, including the Nahda stage on the Hassan II esplanade (capacity 130,000) and the Bouregreg stage on the riverbank. A single ticketed stage at OLM Souissi hosts the international pop headliners: past acts include Mariah Carey, Drake, Rihanna, Bruno Mars, and Dua Lipa. The free stages consistently feature Gnawa, Amazigh, and Andalusian classical music alongside Arab pop and African contemporary acts.
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Day-by-day breakdown
The Kasbah of the Udayas is a 12th-century fortified neighbourhood above the Bou Regreg estuary. The blue-and-white painted streets predate Chefchaouen's famous equivalent by centuries. Free to enter; open daily. The Andalusian garden inside the kasbah is one of the most peaceful public spaces in Morocco. The medina market (souks) on Rue des Consuls sells carpets, leather goods, and silver. Walk south to the Hassan Tower, an unfinished 12th-century minaret, and the Mohammed V Mausoleum (free, open to non-Muslims).
The Nahda stage on the Hassan II esplanade runs from 7pm. The scale is considerable: 130,000-person capacity, multiple screens, a professional stage setup equivalent to any major European festival. Arrive 90 minutes before headline acts. The Bouregreg riverbank stage is smaller and typically programmes Moroccan traditional music, Andalusian classical, and Amazigh folk acts: often the most interesting programming of the festival.
The Chellah necropolis is 2 kilometres south of the medina: a Roman city site incorporated into a 14th-century Merenid funerary complex, now colonised by storks nesting in the ruined minarets. Entry is 70 MAD. Sale, across the river from Rabat (free pedestrian bridge), is a separate city with its own medina that sees almost no tourists — the souks here operate for local trade rather than tourist trade and prices reflect this.
The Plage de Rabat stretches north of the Kasbah along the Atlantic coast. The beach is free and popular with local families. The Atlantic swell makes it better for walking than swimming. The festival's final evenings typically feature the biggest names; check the programme at mawazine.ma for the schedule.