What is Songkran?
Songkran is Thailand's traditional New Year festival, celebrated every year from April 13 to 15— and increasingly extended across the entire month of April. It is the country's biggest and most culturally significant public holiday, a time when families reunite, temples fill with worshippers, and the streets of every city and village erupt into the world's most exuberant water celebration. Tourists visit the country to join in with the round-the-clock waterfights. Holidaymakers are often seen still playing in paddling pools at 4am in the morning in Bangkok!
The name itself signals the festival's cosmic origins. 'Songkran' derives from the Sanskrit word saṃkrānti, meaning 'passage' — a reference to the astrological moment when the sun moves from Pisces into Aries, marking the traditional start of the new year across many South and Southeast Asian cultures.
At its heart, Songkran is a festival of purification and renewal. The water so joyously thrown across streets, strangers, and passing motorbikes carries deep symbolic meaning: it washes away the sins, misfortunes, and bad luck accumulated in the year gone by. The act of gently pouring scented water over the hands of elders is a revered ritual of respect and blessing. And the spectacular public water battles that attract visitors from every corner of the globe are, at their root, a communal prayer for a fresh and fortunate new year.
Songkran is also celebrated across much of Southeast Asia under different names — Thingyan in Myanmar, Khmer New Year in Cambodia, Pi Mai in Laos — reflecting the shared Hindu-Buddhist heritage of the region. But Thailand's Songkran has grown into the most globally recognised of all, drawing hundreds of thousands of international visitors each April and generating social media content viewed by hundreds of millions worldwide.
The history of Songkran
The origins of Songkran stretch back to ancient India, where a Hindu spring festival marking the solar new year and the new harvest season first took root. As Hindu and Buddhist traditions spread through maritime trade routes across Southeast Asia during the first millennium CE, so too did the custom of celebrating the moment the sun crosses into a new astrological sign. Over the centuries, as Theravada Buddhism rose to prominence under the Khmer Empire (9th–15th century) and the great Ayutthaya Kingdom of Thailand (14th–18th century), the festival absorbed distinctly Buddhist meanings, rituals, and community practices.
The legend that started the festival
The mythological origin of Songkran, recorded on seven stone tablets commissioned by King Rama III and displayed to this day at Wat Pho in Bangkok, tells the story of a brilliant young boy named Thammabal Kumar. A prodigy who could recite Buddhist scripture and understand the language of birds, Thammabal attracted the attention of the Hindu god Kabila Brahma, who descended from the heavens to challenge the child with three impossible riddles. Should the boy answer correctly within seven days, Brahma would surrender his own divine head. If he failed, the boy would lose his.
After six days of searching, Thammabal overheard two eagles discussing the answers — one riddle's answer for morning, one for midday, one for evening — and provided them correctly on the seventh day. True to his word, Brahma offered up his head. But divine heads carry immense cosmic power: placed on the earth, Brahma's head would set the world ablaze; thrown into the sea, the oceans would boil away; cast into the air, the rains would cease forever. And so his seven daughters — the Nang Songkran goddesses, one for each day of the week — carry the severed head in procession around the sacred Mount Meru once a year. That annual procession, that cosmic passage, is Songkran.
From sacred ceremony to global phenomenon
For most of its history, Songkran was observed as a quiet, deeply religious affair. Households were cleaned to sweep out ill fortune. Alms were offered to monks at dawn. Sacred Buddha images were ceremonially bathed in scented water. Younger family members poured fragrant water over the hands of parents and grandparents to seek blessings for the year ahead. The playful water throwing between neighbours was always present, but modest in scale.
The transformation into the spectacular city-wide celebrations seen today accelerated through the late 20th century, as rising domestic tourism brought more Thais to festival centres like Chiang Mai and Bangkok, and international visitors — captivated by the extraordinary spectacle of an entire nation cheerfully soaking each other — began arriving in ever-greater numbers. In 2018, the Thai government extended the official national holiday to seven consecutive days. By 2024, the celebration had expanded to nearly the entire month of April, cementing Songkran's status as Thailand's most powerful cultural export to the world.
In 2023, UNESCO officially inscribed Songkran in Thailand on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, recognising the festival's living traditions, its role in transmitting cultural knowledge across generations, and its deep community significance. It was a formal acknowledgement of what the world already knew: Songkran is one of humanity's great celebrations.
Important traditions of Songkran
Beyond the water battles, Songkran is layered with ceremonies and customs that give the splashing its meaning. Bathing Buddha images with scented water is the spiritual centrepiece of the festival — a merit-making act performed at temples across the country. The gentle pouring of water over elders' hands, accompanied by garlands of jasmine and white champaca flowers, is a gesture of love, gratitude, and blessing that remains central to family celebrations. Participants also smear one another with a cool white mineral paste called Din Sor Pong, traditionally used to soothe sun-baked skin in the fierce April heat. Merit-making through giving alms, releasing caged birds and fish, and donating sand to temple grounds are all woven into the holiday's fabric.
From the legendary moat-side water battles of Chiang Mai's Old City to the vibrant LGBTQ+ celebrations along Silom Road in Bangkok, from village temple ceremonies in the rural north to the massive Siam Songkran Music Festival, the celebrations are as diverse and alive as Thailand itself.
For media buyers: the ViralPress Songkran library
Every April, Songkran produces some of the most visually extraordinary footage on earth — colour, water, crowds, ceremony, and pure human joy, all set against the backdrop of one of the world's most culturally rich countries. Demand from broadcasters, publishers, streaming platforms, and brands for rights-cleared, high-quality Songkran footage has never been greater. ViralPress is the destination.
One of the world's largest curated Songkran libraries
The ViralPress Songkran library holds more than 12,000 clips — and grows with every festival. Every piece of footage was filmed on the ground: at Chiang Mai's famous moat, along Bangkok's Silom and Khao San Roads, in the temple courtyards of Ayutthaya, and in the quiet villages where the older, devotional traditions of the festival unfold away from the cameras of mainstream media. Our contributor network spans professional videographers, documentary filmmakers, photojournalists, and talented local creators who captured moments no press agency could access.
Every submission in the ViralPress library is reviewed, tagged, and enriched by our editorial team before it becomes available for licensing. Media buyers receive not just a clip but full context: precise location, time of day, the specific tradition or event being documented, crowd demographics, and complete technical specifications. We understand what newsrooms need on a deadline and what brand teams need for a global campaign.
Licensing options for every use case
Broadcast and cable television: rights-cleared footage for news programmes, travel documentaries, cultural features, and Year-in-Review packages. Full release documentation, talent clearances where required, and complete metadata provided as standard.
Digital and social media: platform-optimised clips for YouTube, Instagram Reels, TikTok, and Facebook. Available in durations from 15-second social cuts to full-length editorial pieces, in both 4K and HD formats.
Commercial and advertising: exclusive licensing is available for advertising campaigns and branded content. Our team works with brand clients to curate the most impactful and on-brand Songkran visuals for use in regional and global campaigns.
Editorial and publishing: high-resolution stills and video for print magazines, online newspapers, and digital publications. Correct captioning, photographer attribution, and IPTC metadata are included on every asset.
The library covers the full breadth of the festival — the spectacular water battles, the temple ceremonies, the elder blessing rituals, the street parties, the quiet moments of family and devotion. Whatever story you are telling about Thailand, about culture, about community, or about the human capacity for collective joy, we have the footage to tell it.
Contact our licensing team at licensing@viralpress.com. For urgent broadcast requests, we guarantee a response within four hours. Custom clip searches, curated reels, and exclusive rights negotiations are available for enterprise clients.
For creators: Turn your Songkran footage into income
Were you at Songkran? Did you film the chaos on Khao San Road, the water cannons at the Chiang Mai moat, the quiet ceremony of a daughter pouring water over her grandmother's hands? Your footage could be exactly what a broadcaster, travel brand, or international publisher is looking for right now — and ViralPress makes it straightforward to earn from it.
We are actively seeking new submissions from across Thailand and from every style of Songkran celebration, from the massive city parties to the small-town temple rituals. Amateur and professional footage are both welcome. The moment your clip is licensed to a buyer, you earn a royalty.
How to upload and start earning
Create your free ViralPress contributor account at Viralpress.com. There is no subscription fee and no upfront cost — joining is completely free.
Once your account is live, upload your footage through the contributor portal. We accept all major formats including MP4, MOV, AVI, and RAW files from professional cameras. Our upload tool guides you through adding the location, date, and a brief description of what your footage shows — the more detail you provide, the faster buyers find your clip.
Our editorial team reviews every submission, adds professional tags and metadata, and brings your footage to market. You track every view, every licensing enquiry, and every completed sale through your contributor dashboard in real time.
When a buyer licenses your clip, you receive your royalty payment directly to your nominated bank account or PayPal. Payouts are processed monthly, with no minimum threshold.
There is no exclusivity requirement for standard submissions — you keep full ownership of your footage and can submit it to other platforms simultaneously. For creators interested in premium exclusive arrangements, our team is happy to discuss options that offer higher royalty rates in exchange for exclusivity.
Songkran is one of the most searched and licensed events on the ViralPress platform every year. The window of peak demand opens in the weeks before the festival and extends for several months after as broadcasters, travel publishers, and brands build their Thailand and Southeast Asia content. Upload your footage now, and put it in front of buyers at exactly the right moment.
To get started, visit viralpress.com/upload or contact our contributor support team at creators@viralpress.com.
ViralPress is a global video licensing platform connecting the world's best footage with the buyers who need it. Our Songkran library is available year-round. Licensing enquiries: licensing@viralpress.com. Creator submissions: viralpress.com/upload.
