Raffia Festival

Overview

The Raffia Festival is the official annual festival of Inabanga, a municipality in northern Bohol with a documented tradition in raffia loom-weaving that has drawn both local and international recognition. The festival celebrates raffia as the town’s primary craft industry and as an expression of Inabangnon cultural identity.

Raffia is a natural fibre extracted from the buri palm. In Inabanga, more than 1,000 individuals across the municipality’s 50 barangays have been engaged in home-based raffia loom-weaving. The craft has given the town a distinct economic identity within Bohol’s hand-woven goods sector.

The festival’s centrepiece is a Mardi Gras-style street-dancing procession, with contingents from seven of Inabanga’s secondary schools performing in raffia-themed costume. Locals and visitors join alongside the students, making the event as much a hometown gathering as a showcase for the municipality’s textile tradition.

That economic identity is the reason the festival exists at all, and it sets Inabanga apart from most Bohol town fiestas, which are typically built around a patron saint or a harvest rather than an export craft. Inabanga’s weavers work raffia at home between farming and fishing seasons rather than as a full-time trade, and finished bags, pouches, and place mats move from those households through local cooperatives and small shops — enterprises like Sinapido, a Barangay Sto. Rosario producer founded in 2017 — into markets beyond Bohol. The festival functions as the public, annual face of an industry that otherwise runs quietly out of individual homes across roughly 50 barangays, which is also why the street-dancing contingents draw on the municipality’s schools rather than a dedicated performance troupe: this is a craft the whole town has some connection to, not a specialised trade practised by a handful of families.

Raffia itself carries an environmental case alongside the cultural one. As a plant fibre stripped from the buri palm, it biodegrades in a way synthetic bag materials don’t, and several Inabanga producers market their raffia goods on that basis rather than purely as handmade souvenirs — a distinction that matters more as the craft reaches buyers outside Bohol who may be choosing a raffia bag specifically as an alternative to plastic or synthetic weaves.

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Location

Inabanga town centre (Poblacion), Inabanga, Bohol. The festival is centred on the town’s main streets and public spaces.

Getting There

Inabanga is located in northern Bohol, approximately 60 km from Tagbilaran City along the Bohol Circumferential Road via Tubigon. Regular bus and jeepney services connect Tagbilaran to Inabanga. The festival’s exact recurring month or date is not consistently published; confirm current-year dates with the Inabanga municipal tourism office before planning a visit. Transport follows the regular bus and jeepney schedule unless a special service is announced locally for the festival period.

Practical Info

• Event type: Official municipal festival (BPTO classification: Customs and Traditions / Festival)
• Highlight: Street dancing with contingents from seven secondary schools
• Industry context: 1,000+ home-based weavers across 50 barangays
• Inabanga’s civic (town) fiesta, honoring St. Paul the Apostle, falls on June 30 — this is a separately documented date and has not been confirmed as coinciding with the Raffia Festival specifically
• Specific annual date, entrance or viewing fees, and the full programme of events are not consistently published; confirm current details with the Inabanga LGU tourism office before visiting.

What to Expect

The crowd is predominantly local — this reads closer to a hometown fiesta than a staged event for outsiders, with the school contingents as the centrepiece rather than performers for a tourist audience. Raffia products from Inabanga’s weavers are sold year-round, not only during the festival week.

Notes

• The buri palm (from which raffia is extracted) is native to the Philippines and has supported cottage industries across several Visayan provinces
• Nearby: Inabanga Cultural and Creative Park, St. Paul the Apostle Parish, God the Father of all Mankind Pilgrim Center
• Whether a trade fair or market runs alongside the street dancing is not documented; ask locally when confirming festival dates.
• RAFFIA FESTIVAL STREET DANCING — Municipality of Inabanga (Facebook), accessed 2026-07-17.
• List of Bohol festivals – Wikipedia, accessed 2026-07-17.

Related

• All Bohol festivals by month
• Inabanga
• Bohol food & culture
• When to visit Bohol