Uiryeong Rich Rich Festival 2026 (의령 리치리치 페스티벌)

Uiryeong (의령) is a small, rural county in the middle of Gyeongsangnam-do, and its biggest annual event leans hard into a single idea: luck and wealth. The Rich Rich Festival takes its theme from Sotbawi (솥바위), a cauldron-shaped rock that sits in the river near the town. A well-known local legend says that great fortune would emerge within roughly eight kilometres of the rock, and the founders of three major Korean conglomerates — Samsung, LG and Hyosung — were indeed born in villages nearby. The county has turned that story into a cheerful “come and catch the wealth energy” festival of concerts, markets and family activities. It is folklore used as a hook, not a serious claim, and the festival treats it with a light touch.

For 2026 this is the 5th edition, running October 2 to 5 (Friday to Monday). One thing to note before you plan: the national planning sheet lists October 1-4, but the official festival site and every recent Korean news report give October 2-5, so those are the dates used throughout this guide. The main grounds are Uiryeong County Citizens’ Park and the Sotbawi area in Uiryeong-eup, with a multi-purpose sports ground used as the principal concert stage.

What you actually do here

The core of the festival is evening entertainment on a riverside park, plus daytime markets and hands-on programmes aimed at families across three generations — the organiser’s own tagline is about grandparents, parents and children experiencing it together. In practice that means a mix of concert stages, a nightly music party, food zones, and playful “wealth”-themed booths and photo spots built around the Sotbawi story.

Concerts are the clear headline draw. Across the four days the announced lineup includes the girl group RISENEU, rapper Woo Won-jae, veteran singer Hong Kyung-min and the Yuk Jung-wan Band, alongside trot performers such as Kim Yong-bin, Kim Hee-jae and Son Bin-ah, and a closing harmony concert led by Park Ji-hyun. There is also a televised-style trot programme on the second day. This is a pop-and-trot concert festival first and a cultural-heritage event second, so come for the stage line-up rather than for traditional performance.

Away from the stage, the festival runs a family programme of kids’ shows — including a licensed children’s sing-along show — along with market stalls selling local produce and food. Some programmes ask for advance reservation through the official website, so if a specific show or experience matters to you, check and book it before you travel rather than assuming walk-up entry.

Programme and timetable

Several anchor events already have fixed slots, even though the full hour-by-hour grid is best checked on the official site shortly before you go.

The opening ceremony is on the first evening (October 2) and is paired with a “Golden Time” concert and an opening fireworks display. On the following nights the stage rotates through the concerts listed above, with October 4 carrying the strongest pop and hip-hop lineup and October 5 closing the festival with a harmony concert from 19:00 to 21:00 on the main stage.

A recurring nightly draw is the Rich EDM disco party, scheduled at about 21:00 on October 2-4, combining a DJ set with laser lighting, special effects and fireworks. If fireworks are a priority, those first three nights are the reliable window; the closing night is built around the seated concert instead.

Because the concerts and the EDM party are all after dark, the sensible shape of a visit is to arrive in the afternoon, walk the riverside park and the Sotbawi viewpoint in daylight, eat early, and then settle in for a stage event. Do not build a tight schedule around a single named act until the final running order is published, since these line-ups can shift close to the date.

Combining it with the autumn flower festival

Uiryeong also runs a separate autumn flower event, the Gigang Rich Flower Festival, along the Namgang riverbank at the same time of year; local reporting says it opened in late September and continues into mid-October, overlapping the Rich Rich dates. The county has said shuttle buses will link the main festival grounds with the flower-festival site, though the detailed shuttle plan was still being finalised when this guide was written. If you are already making the long trip to Uiryeong, the two events together make a fuller day — treat the shuttle as “planned, confirm on arrival” rather than a fixed timetable.

Getting there without a car

This is the hardest part of the trip, and worth planning first. Uiryeong has no train station, so there is no direct rail option.

The most direct public route is an intercity bus from Seoul’s Dong Seoul Terminal to Uiryeong Public Bus Terminal. The catch is frequency and time: timetable aggregators show only a few departures a day (first around 09:00, last around 16:30) and a journey of roughly five hours. That makes a same-day return from Seoul impractical if you want to see an evening concert.

The more flexible option is to split the trip: take a KTX from Seoul to Jinju (about three and a half hours), then change to a Jinju-to-Uiryeong intercity bus, which runs several times a day and takes around 40 minutes. Two independent timetable sources put the Jinju-Uiryeong leg at roughly 40 minutes with departures spread from early morning to evening, which gives you more room to time your return than the single direct bus does.

From Uiryeong’s bus terminal, the riverside festival grounds are a short taxi ride or local-bus hop. On event days, use a Korean map app on the day and set the festival park — not just “Uiryeong” — as your destination, because temporary traffic control and the inter-venue shuttle can change the usual approach.

Food on site and nearby

The festival has food zones and food trucks; county notices before the event mention hygiene training for the stall and food-truck operators, so expect a working food court rather than a formal restaurant experience. As with most Korean festivals, the exact 2026 menus, prices and vegetarian options were not published in a form worth quoting here, so treat on-site eating as a convenience and check prices at the stall.

For a more dependable local meal, look to the town itself. Uiryeong’s best-known specialty is manggaetteok (망개떡), a soft rice cake filled with sweet red-bean paste and wrapped in a greenbrier leaf that keeps it moist and adds a faint herbal scent; “Uiryeong manggaetteok” is a registered geographical-indication product and is sold at shops around the old-town market. The town is also known for buckwheat noodles (소바), served cold with a dipping broth at long-running noodle houses in the traditional market. Further afield, Uiryeong is one of Korea’s main greenhouse-watermelon areas, sold under the county’s Toyoae brand — though that is a spring-to-summer crop and a point of regional pride rather than something you will buy fresh in October.

Honest assessment

The Rich Rich Festival is an unpretentious, upbeat county festival that knows exactly what it is: a few nights of free concerts and fireworks wrapped in a fun “wealth” theme, set on a pleasant riverside park. Its strengths are the free admission, a genuinely strong 2026 concert lineup for an event this size, and a distinctive local story in the Sotbawi legend that gives the whole thing a reason to exist beyond generic autumn programming. The county reports that the 2025 edition drew a record of around 340,000 visitors, so this is a busy, well-established event rather than a sleepy local fair.

The honest weakness is access and pacing. Uiryeong is genuinely hard to reach without a car — no railway, a long direct bus with few departures, and a change at Jinju as the practical alternative — and the parts most people come for happen after dark. That combination makes it a poor Seoul day trip and a much better fit if you are already travelling in Gyeongsangnam-do or willing to stay a night nearby. It is also a concert-and-crowds festival, not a quiet cultural outing; if you dislike large evening crowds and loud stages, this is not the trip for you.

Plan it as an afternoon-into-evening visit, confirm the final concert schedule and any reservation-only programmes on the official site before you leave, and check the shuttle and traffic notices when you arrive rather than relying on last year’s arrangements.