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Your Favorite Gukbap Restaurant Could Be Your Next Travel Destination! 2026 Busan Dwaeji Gukbap Grand Fair to Be Held

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Busan Metropolitan City, headed by Mayor Chun Jae-soo, and the Busan Tourism Organization, headed by President Lee Jung-sil, announced that they will hold the 2026 Busan Dwaeji Gukbap Grand Fair for the first time this year. The participatory culinary event will use dwaeji gukbap, one of Busan’s signature culinary assets, to expand the city’s local identity and food culture into tourism content.

The 2026 Busan Dwaeji Gukbap Grand Fair was created to cast new light on dwaeji gukbap, a signature dish deeply rooted in the daily lives of Busan residents, through online and offline public participation and diverse content, and to develop it into a signature culinary tourism offering representing Busan.

As recent tourism trends have increasingly focused on directly experiencing a region’s distinctive food and everyday culture, representative local dishes themselves are gaining attention as both a key motivation for tourists to visit a destination and an important form of tourism content that promotes the city.

Dwaeji gukbap is a local dish that has long been part of everyday life in Busan. Each restaurant offers its own distinctive flavors and character, helping the dish establish itself as one of the city’s signature culinary assets.

Busan Metropolitan City and the Busan Tourism Organization plan to harness the appeal of dwaeji gukbap to develop a Busan-style culinary tourism experience that turns interest among residents and visitors into actual restaurant visits and broader local tourism.

The Busan Dwaeji Gukbap Grand Fair is a participatory culinary tourism event in which 20 representative gukbap restaurants will first be selected through online and offline recommendations, followed by voting to determine the Top 10 and Top 3. The event will unfold in four stages from August through October: the online and offline Gukbap Recommendation Survey, the Gukbap Summit, Gukbap Week, and the Gukbap Showcase.

For the Gukbap Recommendation Survey, anyone who loves Busan dwaeji gukbap, including Busan residents, may participate through August 29. Online participation will take place through comments on posts related to the Busan Dwaeji Gukbap Grand Fair on platforms including YouTube and Instagram, while offline surveys will be conducted at high-traffic locations such as traditional markets. Based on the recommended restaurants and submitted stories, 20 representative gukbap restaurants will be selected together with “Gukbap Lovers” who know Busan dwaeji gukbap well.

On September 19, the Gukbap Summit will bring together representatives of the 20 selected restaurants, the Gukbap Lovers who recommended them, and culinary experts. Participants will freely discuss the characteristics of each restaurant’s dwaeji gukbap, the reasons behind their recommendations, and the many different appeals of Busan dwaeji gukbap. The Gukbap Summit will also be produced and released as video content.

Gukbap Week will run for approximately two weeks from September 28 to October 14. Residents and visitors will vote among the 20 restaurants selected through the Gukbap Summit to determine the Top 10 and Top 3. Voting will be available either by visiting the participating restaurants or through KakaoMap.

The Gukbap Showcase will be held as an offline event at BIFC2 for three days from October 16 to 18. A variety of programs will allow visitors to taste and enjoy Busan dwaeji gukbap firsthand, including gukbap sales booths and cooking shows. In particular, the Gukbap Awards will be held on October 17 to announce the three best dwaeji gukbap restaurants of the year based on the results of the Gukbap Week voting.

A distinctive feature of the event is that dwaeji gukbap restaurants throughout Busan themselves will serve as festival venues. The program is designed to encourage residents and visitors to visit the restaurants in person while also enjoying nearby commercial districts and local tourism attractions centered around dwaeji gukbap.

More information on the event, including how to participate, is available on the Visit Busan website at https://www.visitbusan.net and on Instagram at @visitbusan.kr.

Na Yun-bin, Director General of the Tourism and MICE Bureau of Busan Metropolitan City, said, “This event is a meaningful initiative that reimagines dwaeji gukbap, one of Busan’s signature foods, as participatory tourism content and connects restaurants and local commercial districts across the city into a single tourism route.”

“We will continue to identify Busan’s diverse culinary assets, including seafood, traditional markets, and local ingredients, and develop them into distinctive tourism content that can only be experienced in Busan,” Na added.