The International Ki Sports Festival bills itself as Korea’s only multi-sport event, mixing competition with an expo, a conference and side events. Its audience is meant to include both elite athletes and ordinary people who play or train. The organiser has staged it in Busan every year since 2023. The 2024 and 2025 editions were held in July at BEXCO, the convention centre in Haeundae. This year it moves to Yeongdo, the harbour island south of the old city centre, and to the autumn.
For 2026 the dates are 31 October and 1 November, a Saturday and a Sunday. KTO lists the venue as P.ARK, a large waterfront cultural complex, using its main Ocean Garden building and the annex art hall, together with the football field at the Busan Environmental Corporation’s Yeongdo site. The address is 180 Haeyang-ro 195beon-gil in Dongsam-dong. The opening hours in KTO’s record are 10:00 to 19:00.
What you actually do here
The programme is a mix of things to watch and things to join. KTO’s description of the main programme names a bodybuilding competition, football, flag football and a hybrid speed race. The festival’s own 2026 page gives a longer list: a Hybrid Fitness Race, K Classic Busan, a university-division bodybuilding and fitness contest, a Flag Football Championship, a Zelo Jiu-Jitsu Championship, a wellness class and a senior runway. The two lists overlap but are not identical, and “K Classic Busan” appears only by name, so I am not going to guess what format it takes.
Around the competitions KTO lists wellness sessions such as yoga and Pilates, a sports equipment exhibition and sales area, booths from sports clothing brands, food trucks, a drinks and dessert zone, and a senior model runway show. If you are not competing, the expo and the wellness classes are the part you can wander through without a plan, while the contests are what you plan around.
Programme and timetable
Both days are listed at 10:00 to 19:00. No timetable for individual competitions was published in any source I could find: not on KTO, not on the festival’s page, and not in news coverage. That matters because four or five different contests are sharing two days and two outdoor and indoor areas, so a particular match or posing round could fall at any hour.
The official page links to registration for competitions, the conference, side events and expo participation. If you are travelling for one named event, such as the flag football championship or the jiu-jitsu contest, ask the organiser for its slot first. The festival’s phone line is 1811-6420 and its email is kisportsfestival@naver.com. Its Instagram account is @kisports_official and it has a YouTube channel called @kisportsfestival, where schedule updates may appear.
Tickets, fees and booking
KTO’s record gives a fee of 30,000 won and nothing else. It does not say whether that is a spectator ticket, a participant fee, a two-day price or a package that includes the expo. The festival’s own page does not state a price. It points to separate registration forms for each category, which suggests that competing, attending the conference and exhibiting are handled differently from simply walking in.
For comparison only, Visit Busan’s listing of the 2024 BEXCO edition showed a 50,000-won single-day pass and a 90,000-won two-day pass. Those figures belong to a different edition at a different venue and should not be used to plan 2026. The only safe step is to confirm with the organiser what 30,000 won buys, and whether spectators need a ticket at all, before you pay or travel.
Getting there without a car
Take a KTX from Seoul Station to Busan Station. Two independent guides put the fastest direct trains at roughly 2 hours 15 minutes and a typical service at about 2 hours 30 minutes, and some trains with extra stops take longer. Use the specific train Korail shows for your date.
From there Yeongdo is a local bus ride across the bridge. Bus 17 serves the area and so does bus 186. One route description tells you to get off at the Arte Museum / Michang Oil stop, which is about a three-minute walk from P.ARK, and another says the National Maritime Museum stop is roughly a seven-minute walk away. Arte Museum Busan is next door to P.ARK, so its signs are a useful landmark. Another route description says to take the buses from Nampo Station on Metro Line 1. Festival weekends can change bus stops and traffic, so check a live Korean map app on the day and enter the street address rather than only “Yeongdo”.
Parking, shuttles and traffic control
No shuttle, satellite car park or road-closure notice for the festival was published in any source I could find. P.ARK has its own car park. Listings describe it as paid, with 500 won per ten minutes after a free period, and say that spaces are limited. Different listings describe the free period differently: one ties it to a café purchase of 10,000 won or more. These are the everyday rates, not festival arrangements. No capacity figure or festival-day parking plan has been published, and listings call the lot limited, so treat driving as the riskier option.
One more thing to plan for: the 34th Yeongdo Bridge Festival runs 30 October to 1 November at the Bongnae-dong water yard and Amir Park, according to Newspim. It has its own programme, including a bridge-crossing performance at 2 p.m. on 31 October. Those are separate venues from P.ARK, and I did not find a distance between them. But two events on one island over the same weekend is a reason to leave more time for buses and taxis, not less.
Day trip or overnight
A Seoul day trip is workable on paper. The KTX takes about two and a quarter to two and a half hours each way and the grounds are open from 10:00 to 19:00, so an early train would get you there for the afternoon. I have not checked last-train times, and the right answer depends on your date, so search the exact return in Korail before you buy the outbound ticket. I did not verify accommodation near Yeongdo, so no hotel is recommended here.
Food on site and nearby
KTO lists food trucks and a drinks and dessert zone among the side events. No source names stalls, menus or prices, so I am not going to. Away from the festival, Yeongdo has a food worth knowing about in Busan eomuk, the fish cake the city is known for. Samjin, founded in 1953 near the Bongnae market, is the best-known name, and a Samjin fish-cake history hall and experience centre in Yeongdo appears in KTO’s visitor information. That is a separate trip from the grounds, so check how far it is on a map before planning a combined afternoon.
Honest assessment
This is a young event run by its own organising team rather than a long-established municipal festival. It began in 2023, and this is its first Yeongdo edition as far as I can tell, so there is little to go on about crowd size, queues or how the two sites work together. The official page is thin: it gives the discipline names and registration links but no dates, venue, prices or timetable on the pages I could read. Most of the practical detail comes from KTO’s Korean record, a local-government registration last updated on 21 September.
What it does offer is unusual: competition in several sports, an expo and wellness classes on a harbour-side site, on an island reachable by bus from the main station. If you already follow bodybuilding, flag football or jiu-jitsu, or you are curious about Korea’s amateur fitness scene, it is worth a look. If you want a settled schedule, a confirmed ticket price and published transport arrangements before you commit, wait for the organiser’s updates and ask the phone line what the 30,000-won fee covers.
