All-Ukrainian Borscht Festival

Held each September in the town of Borschiv, in Ternopil region, whose name bears a striking resemblance to the dish itself, the All-Ukrainian Borscht Festival celebrates the beetroot soup widely regarded as Ukraine's defining national dish. Borscht holds a genuinely central place in Ukrainian family and community life, with regional variations found across every part of the country — over 30 distinct recipes are recognised nationally, each reflecting local ingredients and tradition.

The festival's significance took on a new dimension in 2022, when the culture of Ukrainian borscht cooking was inscribed on UNESCO's List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding, a fast-tracked recognition specifically citing the disruption caused by the ongoing war — displaced communities have found it harder both to grow the local vegetables borscht depends on and to gather together to cook and share it, threatening a tradition otherwise passed down through generations of Ukrainian households.

For a dish traditionally served with sour cream, salo and garlic-flavoured pampushky bread, and considered a genuine marker of a good Ukrainian home cook, Borschiv's festival offers the most fitting possible setting to celebrate it — a town that has, quite literally, grown into an emblem of the dish that shares its name.