01Nature & Season
in 5 months
Hanami
🇯🇵KyotoJapan
Mar 25 – Apr 12, 2027 · 20 daysExplore
The story
What it is, and why it matters
- Category
- Nature & Season
- Tradition
- Secular & Civic
- Attendance
- 800,000 visitors
- Region
- Albuquerque, New Mexico
- UNESCO
- Not listed
BalloonsDawnAviation
The Albuquerque Box — a predictable set of wind layers over the city — lets pilots fly south low and north high. It is the reason mass ascension is possible at all.
Nine days in early October, over a 365-acre launch field. Fifty-two pilots came to the first event in 1972; the field now holds more than 500 balloons, which is the world's largest such gathering.
Dawn Patrol goes up in the dark to test the winds. Mass ascension follows in waves, each launched by a race official with a flare. Special Shape Rodeo — a cow, a bee, a cathedral — closes the week.
