About Mela

A mela is a fair: a gathering where people come together to trade, eat, pray, sing and celebrate. This site is one for the whole world. It lists 1,141 festivals in 192 countries so far, and it grows every day.

The idea is simple. Festivals are where people are at their most generous and most themselves. Knowing what your neighbour is celebrating, and why, is a small step towards knowing your neighbour.

What counts as a festival

Anything people gather for, again and again: holy days and pilgrimages, harvests and new years, carnivals, national days, food and drink fairs, music and film festivals, races and games. Each is filed under one of eight kinds and under every country and city where it is celebrated.

How a page is made

Facts such as place, dates and coordinates come from Wikidata and Wikipedia. Photos come from Wikimedia Commons and are shown with their author and licence. The description is written in new words with AI assistance, from those sources only. Every page is compared with its source article, and one that follows the article's wording too closely is rewritten or held back. Each page names the article it draws on and links to it. Pages are then checked automatically: a page is published only if it has a confirmed country, a freely licensed photo, a known time of year and enough to say. Pages that fall short wait for a person to review them.

How it stays current

Every day Mela rolls dates forward, looks again for the next date of festivals that move with the moon or the season, gathers recent news coverage for festivals that are close, and adds new pages.

Get in touch

To suggest a festival or correct a page, write to mela@cleartrust.cc.