Monkey Buffet Festival 2026: Lopburi's 4,000kg Feast for Macaques

Every year on the last Sunday of November, the ancient Khmer temple of Prang Sam Yot in Lopburi hosts a banquet for its most demanding residents: several hundred long-tailed macaques. Over 4,000 kilograms of fruit, vegetables, and Thai sweets are arranged on elaborate serving tables — complete with ice sculptures and colourful decorations — and then the monkeys descend. What follows is controlled chaos: macaques swarming over watermelons, fighting over corn cobs, and ignoring the photographers entirely. In 2026, the Monkey Buffet Festival takes place on the last Sunday of November — 29 November 2026.

How the Feast Became a Festival

The festival was started in 1989 by a local hotelier named Yongyuth Kitwatananusont, who reasoned that the macaques bring tourists to Lopburi and therefore deserve a thank-you feast. He was right — the event now draws thousands of visitors and substantial media coverage. The monkeys of Lopburi are famous year-round: the town’s population of around 3,000 macaques roams freely through the streets, temples, and shops, treating the entire downtown as their territory. The buffet concentrates all of that energy into a single, gloriously chaotic morning.

The festivities begin around 10 AM with a brief ceremony and traditional Thai dance performance, followed by the unveiling of the food tables. The monkeys need no invitation — they are already waiting, perched on surrounding walls and temple prangs, tracking the proceedings with the focused intensity of people who have done this before. The feast lasts roughly two hours, during which the macaques eat, fight, hoard, and occasionally steal sunglasses and phones from unwary tourists. Watching a macaque methodically dismantle a pineapple four metres above your head, raining juice onto the crowd below, is the kind of thing that stays with you.

Prang Sam Yot: Worth the Visit on Its Own

The event takes place in front of and around Prang Sam Yot — a striking 13th-century Khmer prang (tower) that would be worth visiting even without the primates. The three brick towers, with their stucco exterior, were built during the Khmer Empire’s period of expansion into central Thailand as a Mahayana Buddhist sanctuary under King Jayavarman VII, and were later rededicated to Theravada Buddhism in the Ayutthaya era. The stonework is well-preserved, the proportions are elegant, and the monkeys draped across every available surface somehow add rather than subtract from the atmosphere. Budget 30–40 minutes to walk around the compound after the buffet crowds thin out.

The wider Lopburi old town has a second major site: Phra Narai Ratchaniwet, the 17th-century palace built by King Narai the Great, which houses the Lopburi National Museum. It is a short walk from Prang Sam Yot and easy to combine into a half-day.

Monkey Safety: A Serious Note

Watch out: The macaques of Lopburi are habituated to humans but not domesticated. They bite. Remove sunglasses before entering the area — monkeys will grab them off your face. Close bag zips and pockets. Do not carry food openly. Wear closed shoes (toes in sandals occasionally get bitten). If a monkey scratches or bites you, clean the wound immediately and seek medical advice — post-exposure rabies protocols exist for a reason. The festival’s energy is fun, but treat the animals as wild.

Insider Tip: The best photography position is on the raised area behind the main food tables, not in front. The monkeys approach the tables from the temple walls above and behind — you get cleaner angles with less crowd in the foreground. Arrive 30 minutes early to claim the spot.

Getting There and Staying

Lopburi is 150 kilometres north of Bangkok — about two hours by train from Krung Thep Aphiwat (Bang Sue) station, making it a comfortable day trip. Check the return train schedule before you leave Bangkok; the last direct services run in the early evening. There are guesthouses in Lopburi town if you want to stay over and explore the quieter side of the city after the monkey crowds depart — the old town is a different place once the day-trippers have gone.