[By Genre] Cultural Festival / School Festival Booth Catalog [2026]
Food stalls, class exhibits, and stage events are essential for cultural and school festivals, but once preparations start, it’s easy to get stuck on what to do! You definitely want to avoid choosing a standard attraction that ends up overlapping with other classes, and ideally, you want something that visitors will enjoy and that will become a lasting memory for your group—but once you start thinking about it, the possibilities seem endless.
In this article, we’ll introduce recommended ideas for cultural festival attractions, organized by genre.
If you already have a general direction, try jumping to the headings that interest you from the table of contents.
If you haven’t decided anything yet, we recommend going through the ideas listed at the top of each section in order—you’ll likely find them helpful!
- Cultural Festival: Ranking of Popular Booth Ideas
- Unusual attractions you can do in a classroom for a cultural or school festival
- [For High School Students] A roundup of recommended attractions for the school festival
- Games that rival street festivals and variety shows!? Crowd-pleasers for school cultural festivals
- [Non-food] Cultural festival attractions: from classroom exhibits to stage events
- Festival booth menu items that can be served without cooking and without using fire
- Ideas for stage events and attractions that will liven up a school festival
- Attraction Ideas for School Festivals That Only High Schoolers Can Pull Off?
- A catalog of recommended festival booths for school culture festivals, with ideas that will shine on social media.
- A roundup of recreational activities to liven up cultural and school festivals
- Stage performance ideas to excite a cultural or school festival
- Ideas for exhibits recommended for school culture festivals. Film screenings, too.
- Better than a theme park! Attractions perfect for school cultural festivals
Exhibitions & Art (1–10)
An aquarium without water
As a cultural festival exhibit, showcasing craft projects and similar works is a pretty solid, good idea.
Rather than just making crafts, I think adding captions about each item—its history, origins, and profile—will make the display more compelling.
How about creating an aquarium not with live creatures, but by exhibiting crafted fish, like this “Aquarium Without Water”? Pay attention to lighting and overall atmosphere, and put together an aquarium that’s visually delightful!
PythagoraSwitch
Let’s recreate that famous PythagoraSwitch ourselves! Using anything around us—marbles, soccer balls, chopsticks, rails, toy cars, plastic bottles, and more—let’s build a chain of mechanisms that set each other off like dominoes.
The sense of accomplishment when it’s complete will be huge.
On the day, you could hold one performance every 30 minutes and let the audience start it each time—that might be fun too.
Photo spot exhibit
It’s become trendy to upload cute photos on social media.
The term “Insta-bae” (Instagram-worthy) was even nominated for the Buzzword of the Year award and became a hot topic.
How about setting up Instagrammable photo spots all around the classroom where taking pictures would really pop? If everyone takes photos and posts them on social media, it could generate a lot of buzz.
independent film
By the day of the event, film a roughly 10–15 minute student-made movie and screen it in the classroom.
Cover the windows with blackout curtains and borrow a screen, projector, and surround speakers to create a space that feels like a real movie theater.
You could even offer popcorn and drinks.
For the movie itself, assign roles—director, screenwriter, camera operator, sound, lighting, editor—and work together as a class to produce it.
Even without professional gear like high-end cameras, an iPhone camera is more than enough to shoot.
If you have time, you might try making a few different films, such as a funny comedy or a moving drama.
The experience of making a film—something you don’t often get to do—will likely become a wonderful memory of your school life!
Chalkboard Art
The blackboard—something you’ll always find in a school classroom.
It’s usually used by teachers for writing during lessons, but how about boldly turning it into an art piece for a school festival? True art resides in the familiar everyday! Try transforming the usual, boring scenery with ideas that make it instantly more captivating.
And in the end, the fleeting drama of having to erase it will only make the work more compelling.
Erasing what you’ve drawn is part of the artwork itself!
Cardboard art
Speaking of cardboard, it’s usually not the star of the show—you use it to store supplies or to build paths in a haunted house.
But with a bit of creativity, cardboard can become a full-fledged work of art! If you’re thinking, “But you can’t escape that boxy shape, right?”—not at all! By tearing cardboard into rough pieces and layering or gluing them together, you can create anything from historic buildings to animals and characters.
You can use ordinary cardboard you find anywhere.
The color of the cardboard also changes the feel of the piece, so try mixing different kinds of cardboard to make surprising works of art!
balloon art
Balloon art, which is hugely popular with kids, is guaranteed to create a festive atmosphere and liven up the school festival even more! There are the familiar long balloons that can be twisted together to make animals and other characters, and there are also balloons that come pre-shaped.
They’re fun not only as festival exhibits but also as decorations, like entrance arches.
It’s also a great idea to make balloons right in front of visitors who come to see the exhibits and let them take them home!