Khmer Martial Arts Bokator Festival

Bokator is Cambodia's traditional martial art, tracing its roots to Angkorian-era battlefield combat and animal-inspired strikes carved into temple bas-reliefs. Nearly wiped out under the Khmer Rouge, it was revived by San Kim Sean and formalized through the first national competition at Phnom Penh's Olympic Stadium in 2006. Now included in the 2023 Southeast Asian Games, Bokator festivals in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap draw international competitors and tens of thousands of martial arts students to demonstrations and training sessions.

Bokator traces its own origin story back roughly two thousand years to Angkorian-era warriors, who developed the striking, grappling, and ground-fighting system as battlefield combat rather than sport, and Cambodians point to the fighters carved into Angkor's bas-reliefs as physical evidence of techniques still practiced today.