Shandur Polo Festival

The Shandur Polo Festival is three days of free-style mountain polo played on the world's highest polo ground, at 3,700 m on the plateau between Chitral and Gilgit-Baltistan. This is polo with no referees and no rules to speak of: riders charge the rough turf, the ball stays in play, and the crowd reads the game by the drumbeat. We bring you up to the plateau, camp you in the spectator village, and get you through all three days of matches.

The contest is Chitral against Gilgit-Baltistan, each fielding A, B, C and D sides over the festival. Around the polo there is folk music, dancing, horse parades and a temporary camping village that springs up across the grass for the crowds who come to watch. The plateau is cold at night even in July, the toilets are basic, and the whole thing runs on mountain time, which is part of why it feels the way it does.

Polo has been played here as an annual festival since 1936, under British patronage. The ground was built on the orders of Major Evelyn Hey Cobb, the British political agent of the day, and named Mas Junali, the moonlit polo ground in Khowar. The free-style mountain game is often called polo in its purest form: closer to how the sport began than anything you will see on a manicured field.

Our tour reaches Shandur from the Gilgit side, driving the Ghizer Valley road through Gupis and Phander to the plateau, then leaving down the Chitral side via Mastuj. The festival dates move year to year, so we treat them carefully. The 2026 edition is announced for 8 to 10 July, and recent years have shifted into late June; we state the dates as announced each year and confirm them with you before departure. If you would rather drive the same road outside festival week, see our Shandur Pass road trip.

The heart of it is free-style polo, the no-rules mountain version played between Chitral and Gilgit-Baltistan. There are no helmets and no referee; play runs continuous, and a goal restarts with the scorer galloping the ball back to the centre. The teams field several sides each across the three days, building to the main match that everyone comes for. In 2025 Chitral beat Gilgit-Baltistan 9 to 8 in extra time, which gives you a sense of how close these games run.

Off the ground there is folk music, dancing and horse parades, and a camping village of tents that fills the plateau for the festival. We set you up in pre-arranged tents in that village so you are on site for every match and the evenings around it. Bring warm layers: nights at 3,700 m are cold even in July, and the facilities are basic by design.

The festival is a summer event, but the exact dates change every year, so do not lock in travel before they are confirmed. The 2026 edition is announced for 8 to 10 July. The tradition used to fall around early July, but recent years have moved earlier: the 2025 festival ran 20 to 23 June. We state the dates as the organisers announce them each year and confirm them with you before departure.

Because the dates shift, the rest of the trip is built around the announced festival window. Once the year's dates are set, we lock the Gilgit and plateau nights so you are camped on Shandur for the matches that matter.

Shandur is about 200 km from Gilgit and roughly 155 km from Chitral, reached on the same gravel jeep road as our Shandur road trip. We drive you up from the Gilgit side through the Ghizer Valley and Phander, then out down the Chitral side via Mastuj. If you are arriving on the Karakoram Highway, the trip connects to it: see our complete Karakoram Highway tour.

Accommodation on the plateau is camping. We arrange tents in the festival village ahead of time, because beds and pitches are scarce and the crowd is large, so booking early matters. Meals are cooked hot at camp, which counts for a lot at altitude in the cold.

This is for travellers who want a real mountain festival rather than a comfortable one. You camp at 3,700 m, the nights are cold, the toilets are basic, and the days are full of polo, drums and crowds. In return you see a sporting spectacle unlike any other, in a setting that has barely changed since 1936.

No trekking or special fitness is needed, but you should be content with rough jeep roads, camping at altitude and simple facilities. If that trade sounds worth it for the polo, this is the trip.

Shandur sits at about 3,700 metres on the Shandur Top, the broad grassy plateau that straddles the boundary between the Ghizer district of Gilgit-Baltistan and the Chitral district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The polo ground laid out on the plateau is the highest in the world, which is the whole reason the festival is held here rather than in a town. There is no permanent settlement on the top: for three days each summer a temporary tent city springs up around the field, and the rest of the year it is empty high pasture beside the shallow Shandur Lake. Reaching it means a long jeep journey from either side, up the Ghizer valley past Phander from Gilgit, or up from Mastuj on the Chitral side, which is part of why standing on the ground feels like arriving somewhere truly remote.

The festival is built around the fierce rivalry between the teams of Chitral and Gilgit-Baltistan, who meet on the plateau every July for the final. What they play is free-style polo, the original mountain form of the game with almost no rules: no umpire stops play, the ball is thrown in the air to restart after a goal, and the pace is faster and rougher than the manicured club version. Around the matches, the plateau fills with music, folk dancing, tent camps and thousands of spectators from both valleys, making it as much a cultural gathering as a sporting one. The tournament in its organised form dates to 1936, when a British political agent set it up, but mountain polo itself is far older here, and the passion in the crowd makes that history obvious.

We run the Shandur road and the festival every season, and we know the parts that make or break the trip: securing tents in the village before they vanish, timing the drive so you arrive before the crowds choke the plateau, and tracking the dates as the organisers shift them. Our drivers and guides are local to Ghizer and Chitral, we bring a guide who can read the polo and explain the sides, and we confirm the year's festival dates with you before you book flights. Small groups, hot camp meals, and a plan that flexes with the road and the weather.