2026 Seoul International Garden Show at Seoul Forest
Seoul Forest is a place you walk without needing a reason. The trees that turn with the seasons, the wood where deer live and the reed-fringed pond, the bank running down to the river: it is already green, with no one tending it anew. A forest this size in the middle of Seoul is almost a surprise, a place that has simply been here a long time.
To that familiar forest, this year, gardens are added. The garden show that colored Boramae Park last year has moved its grounds to this forest. From May into autumn, gardens large and small, built by their designers, settle in among the walking paths. At first you wonder what has really changed in a place already so green, but you soon catch the unfamiliar colors and shapes slipped between the lawns and the tree shade you always pass. Chasing those colors, on a Saturday in May, I head into the forest again.
The Forest, Doubled in Water
Step out of Seoul Forest Station on the Suin-Bundang Line and Seongsu's red brick streets turn green at once. From where the city ends, the crowd begins.
At the mouth of the forest, a Haechi in a yellow straw hat greets the visitors. Seoul's mascot is a gardener this year.
I let the crowd carry me in. Unfamiliar beds and structures crowd the path on either side, pulling my eyes sideways, and before long I am standing at Seoul Forest's Mirror Pond. On a windless day the surface goes still, and the upright trees and the pavilion at the far end settle onto the water upside down, perfectly doubled. People pause before it; when a single gust passes, the mirror ripples fine and then sets itself again. Watching for that instant, they crouch at the pond's edge and frame the same shot over and over.
A Midday on the Lawn
Round the pond and a broad lawn opens up. The buzz reaches you from a distance; it is the busiest spot of the day. Off to one side stands a photo zone of Haechi and friends, round little characters in pink, mint, and lavender, with Seoul's slogan raised large in letters beside them. People take turns lifting their cameras in front of it.
Turn from the photo zone and the lawn spreads wide and cool, broad and well-kept, with room to spare for anyone wanting to lay out a mat. A couple stretched on a blanket, a group circled in the shade of a tent, a parent chasing a child: the afternoon passes on the grass. Some have come for the show; others simply came out for a weekend picnic and found the gardens thrown in. Seoul Forest was always a fine place to spread a mat and rest.
Plenty of people have brought their dogs. The leads can't come off here, so the dog stays close, a water bowl set out and treats torn off, the half-day spent together. One buries its nose in the strange grass; another, worn out by the heat, leans against its owner's knee. When two unfamiliar dogs touch noses, the two people holding the leads trade a sheepish nod. With a dog between them, strangers open up for a moment.
The flowers and gardens are the headline, yet the most tender scene comes from a corner of the lawn like this. More than a garden seen from afar, one small thing wagging its tail at your feet holds a person longer.
Around the rim of the lawn, the gardens set this year run one after another. Built with care by companies and institutions, they vary in shape and color, and one, a bright red lattice raised high, carries from far off in a forest gone all green.
Step close and look in through the dark branches, and on a bench inside the lattice people sit cooling off. A garden isn't only for looking; like this, it casts a shade and seats your tired legs. When the walk has run long enough to ache, a well-placed patch of shade is more than welcome.
The City Behind the Fountain
Leave the lawn and the sound of water reaches you first. Follow the fountain rising as high as the trees and you come to the Central Pond. Over the reed-ringed water the spray opens like a fan, and in the shade before it people sit and talk. On a hot day the sound of water spreading is enough to cool you; you stop here without going looking for a garden at all.
The pond is wider than you'd think. Behind the single upright jet, green trees ring the water, and beyond them the city's tall buildings stand faintly in the distance. Forest and water and towers layered in one frame is a picture only a park in the heart of Seoul can give. You forget for a while that you are inside a garden, and only when you catch the buildings over the trees do you remember you are in the middle of a city.
At the water's edge the photographers never let up. Behind the fountain, at a gap in the reeds, at the deck where the pond shows clear: a short line forms wherever the backdrop is good, and when someone in a white dress steps to the end of it, the figure rises bright between the green and the water.
Through the Sculpture Garden
Out of the center, I follow the forest's edge. Unlike the crowded lawn, the outer path runs quieter, the shade deeper. Walk a while and it leads into Seoul Forest's Sculpture Garden. Purple allium pushes its stems up to about waist height, each one holding a round flower like a ball. Among the cluster stands a single red human-shaped sculpture; against the purple flowers and green leaves the red leaps out at once, and the eyes that came for the flowers catch on it each time.
Out of the Sculpture Garden and back onto the loop. Flowers I can't name bloom in turns along the way, color after color. The lilies alone mix white and pink, but it is the orange one, full of light, that stops me. Past petals curled back the stamens reach long, and that single bloom against the green shade is bright as if it had drunk the sun whole.
A Runway Paved in Wildflowers
Follow a glint between the trees and the path changes altogether. This is the garden Dior built. Walk slowly beneath the long teal steel arches and, on a path said to echo the Grand Palais in Paris, you feel for a moment like you are crossing a runway.
Look down and there are no showy flowers at all. What meets an eye braced for a luxury name is humble wildflowers. The garden of Granville, Dior's hometown, was carried here into this forest, they say, and beneath arches dressed to the nines the plainest flowers are laid. So people come in looking up at the arches and leave looking down at their feet.
Past the arches the garden goes on. Along the inner path, dark even at midday under the heavy leaf-shade, sharp white stars hang from the branches and hold light in points. Unlike the entrance bright with flowers, the inside lets light stand in for the blooms.
Look closely at a single one and translucent ribs gather into a round body of light, that one star clear as a jewel against the green leaves and the overcast sky. What glittered as a mass from afar separates, the closer you come, into strands each its own.
At the corner where you leave the garden stands a lantern column woven from wooden slats. Through the lattice the light inside leaks warm, blending with the blue shade. It is light that will come alive all at once after dark; the midday walk only sketches that evening for a moment and moves on.
A Friend in Every Garden
Out of Dior's garden and back on the path, this time a long line of people. Curious, I go closer: a Ryan bigger than a person lies sprawled on its side in the middle of the garden, a single red rose in its mouth. Chin propped on one hand, legs stretched long, the pose could not be more shameless. Flowers and gardens set aside, the line is here to get that one yellow face on camera. When their turn comes they press in close for a shot, and only then drift off with their faces eased.
A little farther and another garden hides another face. This time a cream-colored marten clutches a red heart on a bench. Dodami, they call it, modeled on a vanishing endangered species, though the way it holds the heart shows not a trace of that weight. Loading a heavy story onto a cute little face is how gardens like these do their work.
At another spot I stop before a cottage with vines over its roof. Green spills down the crooked gable, and purple iris blooms by the door. A house a fairy-tale witch might live in. A child in blue walks in through the open door without hesitating, and watching that small back, you half believe a path into another world really is hidden inside.
And it isn't only gardens like these. One stacks stones into an old courtyard; another fills its frame with tall grasses and wildflowers alone. Gardens carried from abroad, and small beds tended by students, each take a place. Caught up chasing the cute characters, you look up and find that, in the end, it is all gardens and flowers.
In the same season, a secret forest built for Pokémon's thirtieth year hides along the forest's ginkgo path, so that this spring, whichever way you walk, Seoul Forest has a familiar face waiting.
The Garden at Sundown
Walk and sit and look long enough and the sun tips down before you know it. The light that was overhead when you came lies long through the trees, and the lawn and the path turn gold. At the floor-fountain plaza on the way out, the name 2026 Seoul International Garden Show rises in large letters, and people who shot photos all day step before it one last time. Among the hands trying to leave a record of the day, children run through the jets of water, and the sunset settling over the letters deepens their color. The forest, crowded all day, sinks slowly into the evening light.
There are too many gardens to see in a day. Missed paths keep cropping up the whole way, and at the big maps set here and there, people still gather after the sun has gone, tracing with a finger the paths they didn't reach today.
Not seeing it all at once isn't only a loss. The gardens that bloom in spring will differ from the ones that color in autumn, so it is fine to come back once a season and take them in by parts. There is no telling how long the gardens will stay in this forest, but the forest is always here. Seoul Forest, after all, is a place you walk without needing a reason.
Reference
Open in Naver Map- Dates: May 1 to October 27, 2026
- Getting there: A 5-minute walk from Seoul Forest Station on the Suin-Bundang Line
- Official site (opens in new tab)