The Daegu Chimaek Festival site from last year, provided by Daegu City. Daegu City announced on the 27th that the Daegu Chimaek Festival has been selected as a ‘2026-2027 Cultural Tourism Festival’ organized by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.
The city evaluated that by being selected three consecutive times, following the ‘2020-2023’ and ‘2024-2025’ Cultural Tourism Festivals, the Daegu Chimaek Festival could be established as a representative regional festival nationwide. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism selected cultural tourism festivals for 2026-2027 (25 nationwide) by comprehensively evaluating the results of expert and consumer evaluations, feedback from regional residents, the occurrence of negative issues such as overpricing, and the festival’s hosting readiness for the festivals planned for 2024-2025.
The Daegu Chimaek Festival will receive a government subsidy of 80 million won over the next two years and will benefit from various forms of support, including domestic and international promotional marketing, tourism product development, and content competitiveness enhancement. With the ministry’s selection, its credibility is further strengthened, and it is expected to progress into a national festival. The city plans to elevate the Daegu Chimaek Festival into a global ‘K-Food’ festival that attracts people from all over the world.
Utilizing Daegu’s hot weather and excellent poultry industry infrastructure, the Daegu Chimaek Festival, since its inception in 2013, has grown into a representative local summer festival. It is estimated that more than 1 million people visited the festival held last July. The economic ripple effect from the festival has been analyzed to induce a production effect of 68.4 billion won, an added value effect of 26.8 billion won, and an employment induction effect of 654 people.
Park Ki-hwan, Director of the Economic Affairs Bureau of Daegu City, stated, “The brand value of the Daegu Chimaek Festival, Daegu’s only cultural tourism festival, will be further enhanced,” and added, “With this selection as an opportunity, we will prepare even more diverse and high-quality programs to provide differentiated festival experiences for domestic and international tourists.”