TAQAH: A 15-day festival opened in Taqah on Thursday evening, extending Khareef activity east of Salalah and giving local producers and small businesses an additional platform during the tourism season's busiest weeks.
Staged at Al Fardhah until August 27, Taqah Festival 2026 combines coastal and rural heritage settings with markets, cultural performances, sporting contests and family entertainment.
The programme includes an exhibition for home-based businesses, a retail fair, theatre performances, folk arts and Omani and Yemeni musical evenings.
Cooking, Al Bar'ah, tug-of-war and children's competitions are among the scheduled contests, alongside sports, games and daily prizes. Festival features also include a maritime village, a rural village and activity corners introducing children to health, education, policing, sound engineering and drawing.
Preliminary estimates from the National Centre for Statistics and Information showed that Dhofar received more than 472,000 Khareef visitors between June 21 and July 31, 2026, an increase of 6.9 per cent from the same period a year earlier.
The rise provides a timely backdrop to the festival's effort to turn growing visitor traffic into longer stays and more spending at businesses in Taqah.
In an exclusive statement to the Observer, Shaikh Tariq bin Khalid al Hinai, Wali of Taqah, said the opening formed part of continuing efforts to strengthen the wilayat's standing as a prominent tourism and cultural destination during Khareef Dhofar Season and to use its natural and historical assets to support local development and stimulate economic activity.
"We have worked to present an integrated experience that reflects Taqah's distinctive coastal and rural identity. It brings together cultural heritage, entertainment and learning in a way that serves different sections of the community and enriches the visitor experience," he said.
Shaikh Tariq said the festival should not be viewed simply as a short-lived entertainment event.
"We see it as a development platform that gives home-based producers, owners of small and medium enterprises and young people wider opportunities to market their products, participate and gain experience," he said. "That helps extend the economic impact of the Khareef season and ensures that the local community benefits more fully from it."
For readers unfamiliar with the area, Taqah is one of Dhofar's 10 wilayats, or administrative districts, and a historic coastal town about 40 kilometres east of Salalah. The National Centre for Statistics and Information's Statistical Year Book 2025 records a population of 25,166 in the wilayat in 2024, comprising 20,621 Omanis and 4,545 expatriates.
Its landscape brings together the Arabian Sea coast, an agricultural plain and mountain valleys transformed by the Khareef's mist and seasonal rain. Fishing, livestock rearing and agriculture have long shaped local life, while the traditional sardine catch was also dried for use as animal feed and fertiliser.
Taqah Castle and the town's traditional Dhofari houses preserve part of that social and architectural history. Nearby attractions include Wadi Darbat and Khor Rori, where the port settlement of Sumhuram forms part of the Unesco-listed Land of Frankincense. Unesco records activity at Khor Rori from the fourth century BC to the fifth century AD, underlining Taqah's long connection with the frankincense trade and Indian Ocean routes.
The festival's combination of heritage displays, performance spaces and market stalls is intended to connect those attractions more closely with the town's commercial life, giving visitors reasons to remain in the wilayat after daytime excursions.
For full-season context, Dhofar received 1,070,738 visitors during Khareef 2025, with their expenditure estimated at RO 124.6 million. The published data, however, do not show how much of that spending reached individual wilayats outside Salalah.
Taqah Festival forms part of a wider Khareef Dhofar Season 2026 programme comprising 125 events and continuing until September 21. Its 15-day run gives the eastern tourism route a distinct evening hub during the peak season.
Shaikh Tariq said Taqah's position on that route, together with its natural and heritage sites, gave it considerable scope to develop a more varied and sustainable visitor experience. He thanked government and private organisations, community groups, volunteers and supporting partners, saying coordinated effort was essential to the quality of the event, visitor safety and a presentation worthy of Taqah and Dhofar.
"Our aim is for visitors to spend more time in Taqah, discover its history and culture and explore its natural attractions. That movement should translate directly into business for local shops, services and enterprises," he said.
"Success cannot be measured by visitor numbers alone. It must also be measured by the difference the season makes to the community and the local economy."
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