Kathmandu Film Festival 2026: Dates, Venues and What's Showing

Quick Answer

The Kathmandu Film Festival is a new festival of cinema run by Kathmandu Metropolitan City. Its first edition, the Kathmandu Film Festival 2083, runs for three days, Friday, October 30 to Sunday, November 1, 2026 (Kartik 13 to 15, 2083 BS), at venues across the city.

It brings more than 40 films from Nepal and abroad together with talks, masterclasses and a heritage walk, and it was built around a single idea: that Kathmandu's monuments and neighbourhoods have stories film has not yet told. The city is a member of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network for film, and the festival is its first attempt to act like one.

The Three Days

Day	Date	Programme
1	Friday, October 30	A heritage walk through Basantapur and the opening ceremony at Kathmandu Durbar Square
2	Saturday, October 31	Screenings and talks, including Films, Festivals and a Life Well Lived, a conversation with actress Shabana Azmi at the Nepal Tourism Board
3	Sunday, November 1	Screenings, then a red-carpet evening, the awards ceremony and a closing screening of Ke Ghar Ke Dera

Screenings and events are spread across Basantapur, the National Assembly Hall (City Hall), the Nepal Tourism Board building, Jai Nepal Cinema and the Taragaon Next museum near Boudhanath. Check the festival's own announcements for each session's venue and whether it needs advance booking.

What Is Showing

The programme runs in several strands:

• International films, including Bayaan (India), Dear You (China) and The King's Warden (South Korea), alongside a classic, The Godfather.
• Restored Nepali classics: Kumari, Ke Ghar Ke Dera and Sindur.
• Nepal Panorama: ten short films of up to 30 minutes — documentary, fiction, animation and experimental — chosen from 75 submissions. Each selected film receives a Rs 100,000 incentive.
• Youth Video Challenge: twelve videos of up to five minutes by filmmakers aged 40 or under, on the theme My Culture, My Heritage, chosen from 35 entries. The top three receive Rs 150,000, Rs 100,000 and Rs 50,000.
• Short films from Yamagata, Japan, a fellow UNESCO Creative City of Film.
• Talks and masterclasses: a masterclass on film aesthetics, a panel on the past, present and future of Nepal's film industry, and discussions on creative cities and the festival circuit.

Guests include Shabana Azmi; Marco Müller, the former director of the Venice, Locarno and Rome film festivals, now a professor at the Shanghai Film Academy; Japanese director Takayuki Nakamura; and Indian programmer Deepti D'Cunha.

How It Came About

Kathmandu Metropolitan City announced the festival internationally at Cannes in May 2026, when Acting Mayor Sunita Dangol travelled to France at the invitation of the Mayor of Cannes and invited him to Kathmandu in return. Local "film festival in every neighbourhood" screenings were planned as groundwork for the main event.

Announcing the selections in October, Dangol said that "Kathmandu has many untold stories linked to its ancient monuments, social life and cultural heritage", and that the festival is meant to promote the city's identity through film and to connect local and international artists. Aashaman Sangat, coordinator of the city's heritage and tourism committee, called it "the beginning of a long journey to raise Kathmandu's profile internationally".

If You Are in Kathmandu

• Start at Basantapur. The festival's anchor is the old royal square, and the heritage walk and opening use it as a stage. Pair a screening with an hour in Kathmandu Durbar Square and the Kumari Ghar.
• Plan the venues by area. Basantapur, City Hall and the Nepal Tourism Board building are in the old city and Bhrikutimandap; Jai Nepal Cinema is near Durbar Marg and the Narayanhiti Palace Museum; Taragaon Next is out by Boudha. Leave time to cross the city between sessions.
• It overlaps the run-up to Tihar. The festival closes a week before Tihar begins on November 7 — see the Tihar 2026 guide if you are staying on.

Will It Return?

This is the first edition. The city has presented it as the start of a regular international festival, but no date for a 2027 edition has been announced. This page will be updated when one is.