Your Guide To The Omani Dates Festival This Year

This will be Oman’s 6th version of the Dates Festival organized by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries

Returning for its 6th season, residents in Oman could not be more excited for all things dates-related in the Sultanate.

The Dates Festival in Oman features a wide array of events, activities and seminars as well as the star of the show – Omani dates all around.

In efforts to boost and develop the farm sector in the Sultanate of Oman, the date festival was born and has been a success over the past years.

It also hopes to increase the value of Omani dates and raise public awareness on the importance of palm trees and dates in the country.

When is the Omani Dates Festival taking place?

This year’s date festival will start on October 24, 2018 and end on October 31, 2018. Which means that you’ve got only eight days to indulge in all things dates in the Sultanate.

Where is the Oman Dates Festival happening?

For those wanting to take part in the Dates festival or to indulge in dates all day and night, then head on over to Al Khuwayr district.

What is included in the Omani Dates Festival?

With more than 70 farmers, factory owners and private companies taking park in the date festival – you can expect a lot of local date production, date seminars, dates tasting and more.

Just to give you a background, the overall estimated date production of Oman in 2017 reached 361,000 tonners – an impressive increase from 2016 and 2015.

And of those thousands of tonnes – 53% were used for human consumption, 6% for export, 41% for factory processing.

You can also guarantee that the dates produced and showcased at this year’s Omani Dates fair will be top-notch as the Ministry distributed more than 725,000 seedlings to farmers to replace old date palm trees.

Moreover, the best part of this entire festival is a drawing competition called Nkhlati, which will be conducted by the Ministry of Education – 1,000 students will take part in the competition to teach students about the date palm tree and its significance to the Oman culture.

Here are some snippets from the Oman Dates festival over the years: