The Deer Arrives
The parade sets off. Every puppet is a rattan and bamboo frame covered in tissue paper, lit from inside.
Giant Puppet Parade, Siem Reap
Giant Puppet Parade
The 16th Giant Puppet Parade, Siem Reap, 21 February 2026. This year's theme: Wildlife of Cambodia, The Wild Parade. The Giant Puppet Project was started in 2007 by the artists Jig Cochrane and Sasha Constable and the architect Stuart Cochlin. Every year young Cambodian artists spend weeks running workshops with hundreds of children from local organisations that give disadvantaged children schooling, food and a safe place to live. Together they build giant lantern puppets from rattan and bamboo frames covered in tissue paper. Then, on one night in February, the children walk their puppets through the streets of the town and Siem Reap turns out to watch. The puppets have always carried a message about health, poverty or the environment, and many have been endangered animals. This year every one of them was Cambodian wildlife. Happy happy.
See alsoPileated gibbon family, Angkor →
editorialThe Gibbon
The parade's gibbon. The real ones are back in the forest at Angkor, rewilded since 2013.
Giant Puppet Parade, Siem Reap
Face to Face
Giant Puppet Parade, Siem Reap
Crowned
Giant Puppet Parade, Siem Reap
Tiger
Giant Puppet Parade, Siem Reap
Looking Up
Giant Puppet Parade, Siem Reap
The Band
Giant Puppet Parade, Siem Reap
The Frog
This year's theme was the wildlife of Cambodia.
Giant Puppet Parade, Siem Reap
On His Shoulders
Giant Puppet Parade, Siem Reap
Through the Trees
Giant Puppet Parade, Siem Reap
Last Light
Giant Puppet Parade, Siem Reap