BALI, INDONESIA, November 8, 2023 (The Bali Sun): The traditional Balinese New Year, known as Nyepi Day, will fall on 11th March 2024. The festival is honored by Balinese Hindus across the island as a day of silence which will start at 5:59 a.m. on Monday 11th March 2024 until 6:00 a.m. on Tuesday, 12th March 2024. The night before the day of silence, communities typically come together for the annual Ogoh-Ogoh parade, which is one of the cultural highlights of the year for Balinese people and tourists too. However, leaders have suggested that the Ogoh-Ogoh parades will be canceled this coming year due to the general election that will be held on the 14th of February. However, despite provincial and regency Ogoh-Ogoh parades held in city centers being unlikely to go ahead, festivities can still be held within communities.

The Ogoh-Ogoh parade features huge, intricately designed mythological creatures that represent evil or demonic entities. Every village, every street and every community in Bali works together for weeks ahead of the parade to construct their Ogoh-Ogoh ready for Nyepi Eve. Ogoh-Ogoh typically depicts evil spirits, though in previous years, they have been constructed to resemble more earthly beings, and this is the concern of the regency governments. Speaking on behalf of the Badung Regency Government on the 7th of November, the Head of the Badung Culture Department, Gede Eka Sudarwitha, said that the regency will likely lay on a different kind of cultural ceremony to mark the 1946 Nyepi Saka. He has suggested that the regency parade may not go ahead but that communities will be allowed to continue with their local, traditional parades so long as they do not create Ogoh-Ogoh with a political agenda.

See colorful TikTok videos of Ogoh-Ogoh at source.
https://thebalisun.com/is-the-ogoh-ogoh-parade-in-bali-really-going-to-be-canceled-in-2024/

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