About China Wuqiao International Circus Festival

China Wuqiao International Circus Festival

The China Wuqiao International Circus Festival is a biennial international acrobatics competition and festival founded in 1987 and named for Wuqiao county in Cangzhou, Hebei province — China's officially designated hometown of acrobatics. Co-hosted by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the People's Government of Hebei Province, it is China's longest-running and largest acrobatics festival, and is ranked with the International Circus Festival of Monte-Carlo in Monaco and the World Circus Festival of Tomorrow in Paris as one of the world's three major acrobatic competitions. Its prizes are the Golden Lion, Silver Lion and Bronze Lion awards, and it is known in Chinese and international coverage as the Oriental Acrobatic Arena.

Across its history the festival has hosted more than 600 programmes and more than 30,000 performers and guests from more than 60 countries and regions. For most of that history its main competition sat in Shijiazhuang, the Hebei provincial capital, for infrastructure reasons, even though it bears Wuqiao's name. That geography changed with the 20th edition in 2025, which staged its main activities in Wuqiao itself for the first time, at the new Oriental Acrobatics Center. No standalone official website was attested in English-language sources; official coverage runs through the Ministry of Culture and Tourism's chinaculture.org and Hebei provincial releases, and no website is recorded for the festival here rather than guessed.

Wuqiao, the Hometown of Acrobatics

The festival cannot be understood apart from the county it is named for. Wuqiao acrobatics has a documented history of more than 2,000 years, and Wuqiao is described in official coverage as the cradle of Chinese acrobatics as well as its hometown. Xinhua reporting on the 20th edition traced the tradition across more than two millennia: during the Song dynasty (960–1279) urban culture further propelled the popularity of acrobatics, and Wuqiao's position along the Beijing–Hangzhou Grand Canal — an artificial waterway with a history of more than 2,500 years — let its acrobats travel across regions, showing their skills in street performances and spreading the art far and wide. Other accounts root the tradition in folk performance in the ancient Jizhou region, of which Wuqiao was part, including a folk game called Chiyou Play named after the legendary tribal figure Chi You.

The tradition began as open-air street performance using everyday utensils as props, created by the people and evolved over a long history. Its modern official standing is formal: in 2004 Wuqiao, Cangzhou, was officially awarded the title Hometown of Acrobatics in China by the former Ministry of Culture, and in 2006 Wuqiao acrobatics was listed in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage by the State Council. The festival founded in 1987 was therefore created as the international showcase of a much older folk art, and its name ties a national competition permanently to a small county in Cangzhou.

Founding in 1987 and the Early Editions

The inaugural edition opened on 25 October 1987 at the Hebei Gymnasium in Shijiazhuang. Reporting on the festival's history records that 27 performers from six countries, including Australia, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the former Soviet Union, joined 145 performers from 16 Chinese acrobatic troupes on stage, before tens of thousands of spectators. From the start the festival was conceived as an international competition rather than a domestic gathering, with a set of internationally recognised competition rules and awarding measures similar to those of other international acrobatic competitions.

The early editions established the biennial rhythm — held only in odd years, once every two years, generally in the last week of October or the first week of November — and rapid international growth. The third edition, in 1991, featured 28 acts from countries including Belgium, Canada, Cuba, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, France, Mongolia, Sweden, the United States and the former Soviet Union, as well as China's Hong Kong. The fourth edition, in 1993, brought together 366 performers with 41 acts from 18 countries and regions across all five continents — Asia, Europe, the Americas, Africa and Oceania. By the eighth edition, held in Shijiazhuang from 27 October to 4 November 2001, more than 200 acrobats and 60 magicians were reported as taking part, a fifteen-member international jury was in place, and a World Circus Forum ran as a major side attraction focused on the future of the circus.

Hosts, Aims and the Golden Lion Awards

The festival is jointly organised — in the wording of recent editions, co-hosted — by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the People's Government of Hebei Province. Its stated aims, as recorded in Ministry of Culture coverage, are to build a world-known competition arena for acrobats, promote the exchange and development of acrobatic art, extend reform and opening-up, enhance Sino-foreign understanding, and boost the development of the cultural industry and of society as a whole. After decades of development, official summaries describe it as an important platform for exchanges and cooperation between Chinese and foreign acrobatic circles, and as a business card for China's foreign cultural exchanges.

The competition's awards are composed of the Golden Lion Award, the Silver Lion Award and the Bronze Lion Award. The Golden Lion is described in international coverage as one of the most prestigious awards in the acrobatic world. In the festival's recent standard format, selected programmes are divided into two sessions, A and B, staged in turn, and the jury selects three Golden Lion Awards, five Silver Lion Awards and seven Bronze Lion Awards — the distribution confirmed at both the 19th edition in 2023 and the 20th edition in 2025. Acts in contention span the full range of the art: high-wire acts, aerial hoop, trampolining and hand balancing, as well as magic and ventriloquism, were among the forms listed for the 19th edition.

Among the World's Three Major Acrobatic Competitions

The festival's standing is consistently expressed through a single comparison. It is recognised as one of the world's three major acrobatic competitions, alongside the International Circus Festival of Monte-Carlo in Monaco and the World Circus Festival of Tomorrow in Paris, France. The same formulation appears in People's Daily, Xinhua, State Council Information Office and Cangzhou municipal releases, and in the festival's own billing as the Oriental Acrobatic Arena — an eastern counterpart to the two European institutions.

Within China, the superlatives are equally consistent: it is a national-level acrobatic festival with the longest history and largest scale in China, described at its 20th edition as China's largest and most influential acrobatic event and one of the country's most prominent international arts competitions and cultural festivals. The cumulative figures support the claim: since 1987 the festival has invited over 600 programmes from more than 60 countries and regions, and over 30,000 Chinese and foreign guests and acrobatic artists to Hebei. Individual editions draw submissions on a scale far beyond the final programme — the 19th edition selected its 30 acts from 460 to 500 submissions from more than 50 countries and regions.

The Shijiazhuang Years

For most of its history the festival named for Wuqiao was held elsewhere. Since its establishment, Xinhua noted in 2025, the festival had been held in the provincial capital Shijiazhuang due to a lack of adequate infrastructure in its home county. The inaugural edition used the Hebei Gymnasium in Shijiazhuang, and later editions used venues including the Hebei Provincial Art Center, where the 19th edition opened on 20 October 2023. Cangzhou and Wuqiao appeared first at the edges of the programme: the 15th edition in 2015, which opened on 29 September in Shijiazhuang with about 20 countries and regions participating and ran its closing ceremony on 7 October with a gala lasting to 11 October, held its closing in Cangzhou.

The movement home accelerated at the 19th edition. That edition opened in Shijiazhuang, brought more than 2,200 domestic and international guests and acrobats from 31 countries and regions to Hebei — billed by the provincial culture and tourism department as the largest ever — and then held its closing ceremony and awards party in Wuqiao on 30 October 2023, returning to China's hometown of acrobatics for the first time. During that edition foreign acrobats also visited Wuqiao Acrobatic World, described as the pioneering acrobatic theme park in China, to experience Cangzhou's folk culture. The pattern set in 2023 — competition in the established venues, ceremony in the hometown — became the bridge to a full homecoming two years later.

The 19th Edition in 2023

The 19th China Wuqiao International Circus Festival ran in October 2023, opening on 20 October and concluding on 30 October 2023. It was co-hosted by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the People's Government of Hebei. The organising committee selected 30 outstanding performances from more than 460 submissions — reported elsewhere as nearly 500 entries, and in municipal releases as 500 programmes — from over 50 countries and regions, representing, in the hosts' words, the highest level and latest achievements of contemporary acrobatic art.

The opening ceremony on 20 October was designed in three chapters reviewing the development of the Wuqiao festival over the years, and the participating programmes were divided into sessions A and B, staged in turn. Three Golden Lion Awards, five Silver Lion Awards and seven Bronze Lion Awards were selected. The edition's significance, beyond its scale, was geographic: after 36 years of development since 1987, the festival's closing and awards returned to Wuqiao itself, signalling that the county's own venues and institutions — the acrobatic theme park, its troupes and its school — were ready to receive the event that bears its name.

The 20th Edition Comes Home to Wuqiao in 2025

The 20th China Wuqiao International Circus Festival opened in Wuqiao county on 28 September 2025. People's Daily and Xinhua both stressed the milestone: it was the first time the event's main activities were held in the country's hometown of acrobatics. The main competition ran to the closing ceremony on 3 October 2025, with themed events continuing until 8 October, the last day of that year's eight-day National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival holiday. Some coverage describes the edition as held in both Wuqiao county and Shijiazhuang, reflecting the festival's two homes, but the main activities and the opening ceremony were in Wuqiao, at the magnificent new Oriental Acrobatics Center.

The 20th edition brought together 28 acts from 19 countries and regions, competing for three Golden Lion, five Silver Lion and seven Bronze Lion awards. A special showcase of twelve top Chinese acrobatic programmes funded in recent years by the China National Arts Fund was held on the opening Sunday. Among the Golden Lion winners, China Daily's post-festival account singled out Auspicious Lions Leap Across the Land, performed by Zhao Wenquan of the Hebei Acrobatic Troupe with his team: an evolved version of the Golden Lion-winning Lion Dance from the festival's first edition in 1987, blending a narrative of lion parents raising their cubs with new stunts and merging southern and northern Chinese lion dance styles. The same account profiled Jasmine Straga of Australia, who had participated in every edition since 1998 — first as a contortionist and ring performer, now as a judge — as a witness to the event's transformation from a domestic gathering into a bridge for international cultural exchange. Xinhua reported that the six-day festival drew performers from 19 countries and regions, that Tanzanian acrobats building human pyramids atop planks balanced on rolling cylinders were among the highlights, and that the edition drew over 500,000 visitors to Wuqiao, with tourism revenue of 164 million yuan during the holiday period.

Wuqiao's Acrobatic Institutions: School, World and Museum

The festival's homecoming rests on institutions built in Wuqiao over four decades. The Hebei Wuqiao Acrobatic Art School, founded in 1985 — two years before the festival itself — has trained more than 4,000 professionals and over 1,000 international students. Since 2002 the school alone has trained more than 1,000 international students from over 30 countries and regions, making Wuqiao a training ground for world acrobatics as well as a competition venue, and an acrobatics inheritance system has been established around it.

Wuqiao Acrobatics World, the pioneering acrobatic theme park in China, gives the art a permanent public home between festivals, and the Wuqiao Acrobatic Museum presents nearly 2,000 square metres of exhibition space with more than 800 exhibits covering the history and contemporary development of Wuqiao acrobatics. In recent years the county has also restaged its heritage with technology: a 70-minute acrobatic show of twelve acts, debuted in 2022 and revised four times since, had been staged nearly 1,000 times to a total audience of 726,000 by 2025 reporting, transforming a tradition rooted in street performance into an immersive spectacle. These institutions explain why the 2025 edition could be staged in the county itself: the Oriental Acrobatics Center joined a school, a theme park and a museum that already made Wuqiao a year-round acrobatics destination.

A Bridge for International Exchange

From its first edition — six foreign countries alongside sixteen Chinese troupes — the festival was built as an exchange. Its history since then is a record of widening participation: 18 countries and regions across five continents by 1993, more than 60 countries and regions and 30,000 performers and guests cumulatively by 2023, and judges and performers whose careers span editions, from the international juries of the early 2000s to returning artists judging the 20th edition. The Hebei Wuqiao Acrobatic Art School extends that exchange beyond the festival weeks, training international students who carry Wuqiao technique home.

The 20th edition made the exchange function explicit in its reception. China Daily described the festival as having grown from a domestic gathering to a pivotal bridge for international cultural exchange, firmly placing Wuqiao on the world acrobatics map, and Xinhua presented the 2025 gathering as proof that the ancient art form continues to thrive through innovation and dialogue. The festival's official framing has been consistent since its Ministry of Culture descriptions: a competition arena, a promoter of the exchange and development of acrobatic art, and a means of enhancing Sino-foreign understanding. Its prizes remain its currency — a Golden Lion from Wuqiao sits, by the festival's established ranking, alongside the honours of Monte-Carlo and Paris.

The Festival Today

The China Wuqiao International Circus Festival today is a biennial event of twenty editions, founded in 1987, co-hosted by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Hebei provincial government, and held in the autumn of odd years — most recently from 28 September to 3 October 2025, with themed events to 8 October. Its documented identity rests on verifiable superlatives: China's longest-running and largest acrobatics festival, one of the world's three major acrobatic competitions, more than 600 programmes and 30,000 performers and guests from over 60 countries and regions across its history, and a standard award structure of three Golden, five Silver and seven Bronze Lions.

Its 2025 homecoming closed a circle opened in 1987. The festival named for Wuqiao, long staged in Shijiazhuang for want of infrastructure at home, now performs in Wuqiao itself, in a new Oriental Acrobatics Center a short distance from the school that has trained acrobats since 1985 and the museum that records two millennia of the art. For the county designated China's hometown of acrobatics in 2004, whose acrobatics entered the national intangible cultural heritage list in 2006, the festival is both an international competition and a homecoming that repeats every two years. Official coverage of future editions runs through the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and Hebei provincial channels; no standalone official website is recorded, and none is asserted here.