When you have a winning formula, the incentive is to keep on winning—and that goes for both Calgary’s Dragon Boat Society and the dragon boat racers who partake in the annual festival.

The 2025 Dragon Boat Race and Festival saw an increase in the number of teams from 2024, with out-of-town competitors coming from as far away as Newfoundland to compete at the Glenmore Reservoir.

This year saw 71 teams on the race grid, up from 66 the previous year. It’s an increase that Danny Ng, the Calgary Dragon Boat Society’s founding member, said has come about as a result of the product that the festival has built over the past number of years.

“It’s the product, right? It’s the festival itself. It speaks for itself. For example, this year, we also have a team from Ontario. They emailed us the day after the festival was over and asked ‘How can we register for next year?'” Ng said.

“The word is getting out, and when the news is getting out, like that, man, I tell you, it’s selling itself. So, all we need to do is make sure that we maintain this.”

Ng said that the festival side of the weekend of racing was also attracting more vendors, more food trucks, and more interest in family-friendly activities.

“It’s just grown incredibly and this weekend, we have food trucks, 17 of them, a marketplace, 65 vendors, a kids zone, beer gardens, multicultural entertainment, everything you need for a perfect day,” he said.

Ng said that he wasn’t interested in seeing big changes to the festival given how successful it has become.

“To me, I hate change. I really do. So in other words, what that means is what we have in place, we’re keeping. End of story,” he said.

He said that the festival was looking to put more of an eye on an auspicious year upcoming however, with Aug. 8, 2028 being a big one for the society given how lucky the number eight is in Chinese culture.

“I’m already starting to plan and maybe have an invitational, to send out invitations to teams from China to come and participate,” Ng said.

The goal would be to try and get 88 racing teams on the grid for that year, Ng said.

Youth a bigger focus for the dragon boat festival

Not that there hasn’t been minor changes to the Dragon Boat Festival this year—2025 saw the addition of a youth boat for racing.

Ng said the decision was fitting given this year’s recipient from the annual Sinopec charity race being the Youth Centres of Calgary.

“When we met with Jane [Wachowich], Jane was telling us some of the kids never get out of the neighbourhood. I mean, wow, that’s, you know, they should be here, right? So, we told them we started a youth program, a youth camp, so that youth will be coming here to learn,” Ng said.

Jane Wachowich, Executive Director for Youth Centres of Calgary (YCC), told LWC that many of the kids they support don’t have opportunities to leave the neighbourhoods of Ogden or Forest Lawn to participate in outside activities.

She said that lack of access deprives those youth of opportunities to see the wider community and the benefits that come with that. The funding from the charity race would be going towards the programming at their two centres.

“We provide the kids with a ton of healthy food right after school, an unlimited amount of food. They can take it home if they want to. That’s one of the ways that we’ll be spending the money. We have sports coaching. We have all the sports equipment they could ever want,” Wachowich said.

“We have an art program. We have music lessons from the Royal Conservatory taught by trained teachers, and that requires resources to be able to assure each one of these kids that any one of those activities is available to them for their entire childhood. So it costs money, and we make a big, splashy impact.”

Getting kids involved in dragon boat racing, and the team building that comes with it, was something that YCC said would become part of the camps they offer in 2026.

“These kids will see the all the Instagram posts and the fun we had, and not the kids who participated today, will go back and tell the stories, and I can guarantee we’ll have dozens of kids who are ready to go,” Wachowich said.

“Paddles up!”