Vodundays · History
The national day dedicated to Vodun was instituted in 1993 by Nicéphore Soglo, set on 10 January. It became the Vodun Days in 2024, and its date left 10 January that same year. Thirty years that tell less the story of a festival than that of a recognition.
Verified on 29 July 2026
Dates and milestones verified in open sources. We do not cite the decree number for the institution of the Vodun Days that some sources advance: we were unable to confirm it. Law no. 2024-32 of 2 September 2024, however, is established.
Before all this
Vodun did not wait to be celebrated in order to exist. It has structured life on this coast for centuries, with its convents, its lineages, its prohibitions and its own calendar. What follows does not recount the birth of a religion, but the way a state came at last to recognise it.
1993
President Nicéphore Soglo institutes a national day dedicated to Vodun, set on 10 January. The act is as political as it is cultural: after decades in which traditional practice had been fought against, the state stops merely tolerating it and begins to recognise it.
1996
Vodun is officially recognised as a religion in Benin. This is no administrative detail: it ends a status of exception that placed it apart from the recognised faiths, and begins its legitimate presence in public life.
From 2016
Patrice Talon commits to promoting Vodun well beyond the borders. The logic shifts: it is no longer only about recognising a religion at home, but about presenting it to the world as heritage, and making it a lever of development for Ouidah and for the country.
2024
The celebration expands over several days and takes the name Vodun Days. It leaves the format of a single public holiday to become an international appointment, with its stages, its village, its conferences and its host sites laid out across the town.
2 September 2024
This is the point almost every source still reports wrongly. Law no. 2024-32 replaces the fixed date of 10 January with the second Friday of January and the Thursday preceding it, both public holidays. The festival gains a long weekend, designed for international arrivals. In 2027 this gives 7, 8 and 9 January, with the Grand Ceremony on Friday the 8th.
Today
Attendance has multiplied sevenfold across three editions, from 97,000 participants to more than 740,000. It is no longer the same event: what was a national celebration has become an appointment the worldwide diaspora writes into its calendar, with everything that implies in terms of hotel saturation and necessary preparation.
The national day dedicated to Vodun was instituted in 1993 by President Nicéphore Soglo, set on 10 January. It took the name Vodun Days, and its expanded format, only in 2024, under the presidency of Patrice Talon.
Law no. 2024-32 of 2 September 2024 replaced the fixed date of 10 January with the second Friday of January and the Thursday preceding it, both public holidays. The choice creates a long weekend, designed for international arrivals. This is why the dates shift each year.
Yes. Vodun was officially recognised as a religion in Benin in 1996, three years after the institution of the national day dedicated to it.
Because they describe the pre-2024 regime, without having taken in law no. 2024-32. It is the most widespread error on this subject, and it propagates from one site to the next. Always check the date against the calendar of the second Friday of January.