Fire, chants and daisies: Ethiopia marks its UNESCO-listed Meskel festival

On the evening of 26 September 2026, tens of thousands of people packed into Meskel Square in central Addis Ababa to watch Ethiopian Orthodox priests set alight a towering pyramid of branches and poles known as the Demera. The bonfire is the centrepiece of Meskel, marked the following day, 27 September, when Ethiopian Orthodox Christians commemorate the finding of the True Cross.

Meskel Square itself takes its name from the festival — the Amharic name translates roughly as "Cross Square" — and Ethiopian accounts trace the celebration's continuous observance back more than 1,600 years, according to background on the square's history. Long used for state parades and rallies, the square reverts each September to its original religious purpose, with priests, theology students and brass bands processing with torches around the demera before it is lit.

The festival, one of Ethiopia's oldest and most widely observed religious occasions, is inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, a status granted in 2013, according to UNESCO's official listing. Millions of Ethiopian Christians took part in celebrations nationwide this year, with many families travelling home to mark the day together, the Associated Press reported.

Meskel traces its origin to a fourth-century legend involving the Roman empress Helena, remembered in Ethiopia as Queen Eleni. Tradition holds that Eleni had a vision instructing her to light a bonfire whose smoke would reveal the burial place of the True Cross in Jerusalem, and that the smoke duly rose and bent back down to mark the spot, according to background accounts of the festival's history.

The Demera ritual

In Addis Ababa, the Demera is built as a conical pyre decorated with green grass and Adey Abeba, the yellow Meskel daisies that bloom as the rainy season ends, according to UNESCO's listing and Ethiopia's state broadcaster, Fana. Priests and church choirs chant hymns and perform rhythmic dances around the pyre before the patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church sets it alight at sunset.

Many worshippers later collect charcoal from the embers to mark crosses on their foreheads, a practice some accounts liken to Ash Wednesday. Addis Ababa's police commission closed roads leading to Meskel Square from mid-morning on 26 September until the ceremony concluded, Fana reported.

Family, faith and this year's message

For many Ethiopians, Meskel is as much a family and social occasion as a religious one. "Meskel has a family and social colour. Families come together, the neighbourhood gathers, the city and its surroundings converge," Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said, according to Xinhua.

Ethiopian officials, including Culture and Sports Minister Shewit Shanka, also used this year's Meskel to call for national unity, Xinhua reported, at a time of renewed tension in northern Ethiopia.

Away from the speeches, the holiday remains above all a domestic one. In many households, families mark the day with a shared meal, sometimes slaughtering a sheep or other animal for the occasion, a custom reported by the Associated Press alongside this year's commemorations.

Beyond the capital

Demera bonfires were lit across the country. In the ancient town of Aksum, home to funerary obelisks and the Cathedral of Maryam Tsion that together form a UNESCO World Heritage site in their own right, a bonfire burned before the stelae on 27 September, according to German travel outlet ad-hoc-news.

Ethiopia's tourism promoters used the occasion to court visitors from abroad. State broadcaster Fana encouraged people to combine Meskel with trips to Gondar's imperial-era architecture and the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela, pitching the festival as a doorway into the country's wider heritage.

What happens next

Meskel closes out Ethiopia's September festive season, which opens days earlier with the Ethiopian new year, Enkutatash. For the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, whose members make up the vast majority of celebrants, the Demera and its aftermath mark the turn from the rainy season into the country's short, flower-filled dry spring, during the early weeks of the new Ethiopian calendar year, a season many families spend visiting relatives and rebuilding social ties frayed over the previous twelve months.