A Blooming Ride, Illuminating Hualien

The 2026 Hualien Pacific Ocean Lantern Festival, themed A Blooming Ride, Illuminating Hualien, unfolds along Sunrise Avenue as a day-and-night immersive journey that connects mountains, ocean, city, and people.
Centered on the imagery of the Year of the Horse, the festival integrates Hualien’s landscape textures, cultural diversity, and local rhythms of life. The program includes a main lantern show, 9 themed zones, inclusive installation art, AR interactive experiences, and a limited-time starry-sky fireworks display.
The festival transforms the traditional lantern event from passive viewing into a participatory urban experience—one that can be walked through, photographed, and engaged with—where visitors themselves become part of the artwork.
The main lantern, Blooming Prosperity, stands over 10 meters tall, integrating Hualien’s landscape, local IP imagery, Tropic of Cancer geometry, community co-creation, and kinetic wind-driven structures. Each moving element represents native plant species, while a horse-shaped swing invites family interaction, transforming the lantern from a static landmark into a dynamic core of participatory energy.
The 9 themed zones are organized along a progressive circulation path. The entrance zone, Little Stone Flower Park, features interactive installations made from ESG-friendly corrugated materials, including a local IP character and rideable cardboard rocking horses for family engagement. Hualien 15288 highlights regional characteristics such as sunrise, ocean, flowers, and marine life, offering interactive resting points. Slow Down uses wind-driven installations to simulate the shimmering movement of Pacific waves, capturing the rhythm of light seen from beneath the ocean surface. Breathing incorporates artworks created by nearly a thousand local students and residents, embedding a sense of collective authorship into the festival.