Welcome to the Chester Dragon Boat Festival website.

About Dragon Boating

Dragon boating is one of the UK’s fastest growing water sports and is great fun to do. No previous experience is necessary to take part and it is a sport that is suitable for both young and old alike as the technique is very easily and quickly learnt by everyone in the team. Originally introduced to the UK from China as a community sport, dragon boating was quickly recognised as an sport suitable for corporate events (because of its strong emphasis on team building and fun) and also as a sport ideal as a charity fund raising activity.

As dragon boating is still quite a specialist sport, the objective of the Chester Dragon Boat Festival is to give people in and around the Chester district, an opportunity to come and try dragon boating, to have a fun day out whilst being part of a competitive festival and also, to use the day to raise lots of money for charity.

How charity dragon boating works:

Two types of charity Dragon Boat Events are held in the UK: 'Single Charity' and 'Open Festival'.

In a Single Charity event, the charity books a dragon boat supplier to provide the equipment, staff and instructors for the day, and then organises all the teams themselves. The event costs are then recovered via the team's entry fees.

The 'Open Festival' format benefits charities or schools who are unable to raise the number of teams necessary to cover the costs of organising their own event. In an Open Festival, the festival organisers take on the financial risk and the charities simply 'sell' out at a fixed price, team places to their client database. This way, charities and schools are able to benefit from the fund raising power of a dragon boat event, without having to risk covering the cost of the entire event themselves!

The money is raised by each team member getting sponsorship (£50, but preferably £100) and with each Dragon Boat team comprises on average twenty people, it is not unusual for a team to collectively raise £1,000 or more in sponsorship. When you consider a dragon boat event will have anything from twelve - thirty teams entering, the final total raised for the charity can be quite substantial!

The UK's number one Dragon Boat supplier is and in 2006, their smallest event raised around £9,000, whilst their largest event held on Bewl Water in Kent (the largest event in the UK and we believe, Europe) raised well over £165,000! The event at Bewl Water is also an Open Festival.

The Chester Charity Dragon Boat Festival is also an Open Festival event and in 2007, was held on Sunday 17th June.

This year's date is now set for

Two types of dragon boats are used in the UK, the 30 foot 'mini' dragons that just hold ten people and the 40 foot 'full sized' dragons, that can hold up to twenty people. The dragon boats used in Chester will be the full sized forty foot dragons - replicas of the original mahogany dragon boat donated to the UK by China.