Te Matatini Festival


In the last two weeks, The Westpac Trust Stadium in Wellington has been hosting the Matatini Kapa Haka festival. Kapa Haka is the art of Māori cultural performance. For Te Matatini, adult Kapa Haka groups competed all around the country and finally, the best 1600 performers met in Wellington for the championships in waiata (choral singing) and haka (dance).

The festival is biennual; this means that it is held every two years. It is held in a different location each time. This year 60,000 people were expected to view the event.

In Wellington, the pedestrian crossing signals at intersections were changed to a woman doing action songs for the green “walk” signal, and a man doing a haka for the red “don’t walk” signal.

This year the winner of the grand championship was a group called Ngā Tūmanako, from Auckland.

The next Te Matatini festival will be in Auckland in 2021.


Stadium: a large building for sports games and concerts

location: place

expected: if you think that something will happen in the future, you expect it

action song: a song that also has hand signals to go with it

haka: a traditional Māori dance