Puakea Foundation will be at the 98th Annual Celebration and we hope you will join us! Photo by Joel on Flickr.
From Hawai‘i Guide:
May Day Is Lei Day
The 98th Annual Lei Day Celebration takes over Kapiʻolani Park on May 1, 2026, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Free. Open to the public. The single most Hawaiian public event you can attend. If your trip overlaps with May 1, rearrange your schedule. The lei contest alone — hundreds of handcrafted lei displayed in open exhibition — is unlike anything else you’ll see in Hawaiʻi. The phrase “May Day is Lei Day in Hawaiʻi” goes back to 1928. Don Blanding, a poet and writer for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, proposed a holiday honoring the Hawaiian lei in a column published February 13, 1928. His colleague Grace Tower Warren suggested tying it to May 1 and coined the slogan. The first Lei Day was held that same year in the lobby of Bank of Hawaiʻi.