The story
Ayia Napa International Festival in Ayia Napa
The Ayia Napa International Festival, held the last week of September to coincide with World Tourism Day since its first 1985 staging, now spans four consecutive decades of editions at Ayia Napa's main square and historic monastery. The programme spans theatrical performances, concerts, Cypriot and international folk dancing, traditional craft stalls and a mix of Cypriot and international cuisine.
World Tourism Day gives the Ayia Napa International Festival its fixed annual anchor: organisers deliberately schedule the event for the last week of September specifically to coincide with that international observance, a timing choice that has held since the festival's first staging in September 1985, sustained across four consecutive decades of an event now firmly established as one of the most anticipated on the island's cultural calendar.