The Bulamsan Royal Azalea Festival in Nowon-gu, Seoul, will be held for eleven days from April 16 to 26 around the Bulamsan Butterfly Garden. Around the time cherry petals have flattened onto the pavement and turned brown, another color rises on the mountain's lower slopes. It can be read as the city's spring opening a second act rather than ending all at once.
Royal azaleas do not burst all at once the way cherry blossoms do. After the leaves come out, pink and purple spread upward over them, and the whole slope thickens like cloth soaked in paint. Touched with a fingertip, the petals are thicker and smoother than cherry blossoms, and the day after rain their scent mixes with wet earth and drifts down to the foot of the mountain. The eleven-day span is a length measured against the time it takes for that color to break from its peak.
During the festival, healing programs, hands-on programs and performances are held alongside walks through the azalea colonies. So that visitors do not climb up, look at the flowers and go straight back down, the schedule sets aside time to linger around the Butterfly Garden and slow the body down. Which events fall on which days will be announced through Nowon-gu before the opening.
Bulamsan is a neighborhood mountain that residents of Nowon-gu climb morning and evening. Its granite peak and the Butterfly Garden laid out below are also a site that shows how green space in the city has been managed. Over eleven days, drawing crowds and keeping the colonies intact are forces that push against each other, and each year the festival redraws the line between them.
So what visitors have to observe is simple. Do not step off the laid-out paths, and do not break off flowering branches. When the soil near the roots is trodden and packed down, the colonies show it the following year. Whether the same slope can produce the same color after the festival ends is this event's real report card.
The mountain paths mix gentle stretches with stairs, so shoes with firm soles are better. In mid-April the temperature on the lower slopes falls below that of the city center, and once the sun drops it feels colder still. It is best to bring an outer layer.
For anyone who has been through the crowds under the cherry blossoms, these eleven days offer a different density. You grow short of breath on the way up, and from the ridge the city lies low beneath your feet. The sight of pink spreading above it stays longer with the person who walked up than with the photograph.
Event information
Dates: Thursday, April 16 to Sunday, April 26, 2026
Venue: Around the Bulamsan Butterfly Garden, Nowon-gu, Seoul
Host: Nowon-gu
