✈️ For Six Months, Seoul Becomes a Garden — Woody Magazine, May 9, 2026

Woody Magazine

Stories That Aren't News

✈️ Travel May 9, 2026 (Sat.)

● Curated & Analyzed by Claude AI

For Six Months, Seoul Becomes a Garden

The 2026 Seoul International Garden Show drew its first million visitors in six days — five days faster than last year.

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Seoul Forest looked different last weekend. The crowds arrived earlier than usual, gardens had taken root across the lawns, and the park seemed to be borrowing a season from somewhere else. It was the opening weekend of the 2026 Seoul International Garden Show, which began on May 1.

On opening day alone, 306,500 people walked through the grounds — the largest single-day attendance in the show's eleven-year history, and nearly twice last year's opening figure at Boramae Park (183,448). The pace has scarcely slowed since. By the morning of May 7, six days into the run, cumulative attendance had crossed 1.03 million. Last year's edition needed eleven days to reach the one-million mark; this year took only six.

167

gardens spread across Seoul Forest, the Han River, and the Seongsu and Gwangjin neighborhoods.
Free admission · Through October 27 (180 days)

The lineup is heavy. France's Henri Bava — the landscape architect behind Agence Ter — contributed Garden Beneath the Flowing Forest. Alongside him are works from some of Korea's leading garden designers: Lee Nam-jin's Garden of Waiting, Jung Young-sun's Dior Garden, Hwang Ji-hae's Crown Shyness, and Kim Bong-chan's Path Into the Forest. Add five competition-winning entries, fifty corporate-sponsored gardens, and a roster of community and pop-up installations, and the total reaches 167.

Last year's edition, held at Boramae Park in southwest Seoul, drew ten million visitors over its six-month run — roughly a fifth of South Korea's population. That figure is the point. This is not a spring festival you attend; it is a city operating differently for half a year. The 2026 edition stretches from Seoul Forest to the banks of the Han River, the design-led neighborhood of Seongsu, and parts of Gwangjin District — the show's widest reach yet.

A few notes for the curious. Docent tours run in Korean and English; QR codes scattered through each garden link to mobile guides in nine languages. Garden Hunters, an AR-and-GPS treasure hunt that opened on May 6, is free for the first thousand visitors each day through May 12 (₩5,000 thereafter). Weekday mornings are the best time to catch the Pokémon and Kakao pop-ups without the crowds.

📍 Location & Access

Address

273 Ttukseom-ro, Seongdong-gu, Seoul (Seoul Forest area)

Subway

Suin-Bundang Line, Seoul Forest Station, Exits 3 & 4 (2–5 min walk)
Line 2, Ttukseom Station, Exit 8 (~10 min walk)

Dates

May 1 – Oct 27, 2026 (180 days) · Gardens accessible all day

Admission

Free

Official

seoul.go.kr/festa/garden/y2026 ↗

💡 The Point

The Seoul Garden Show is less an event you visit than a season the city assigns itself — six months of operating as a garden. That's why it doesn't charge admission.

Sources

• 「Source ↗」Hankyung — Garden Show Draws 300,000 on Opening Day (May 3, 2026)
• 「Source ↗」Seoul Economic Daily — One Million Visitors in Six Days (May 7, 2026)
• 「Source ↗」Seoul Mediahub — 180 Days, 167 Gardens, Record Scale (Apr. 30, 2026)
• 「Source ↗」2026 Seoul International Garden Show — Official Website

● Curated & Analyzed by Claude AI

This content is researched, analyzed, and written by Anthropic's Claude AI.
Reader discretion and independent verification are encouraged.

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