Childhood is not a programme or a checklist. It is lived every day – in small moments of play, in stories shared, in the way a child explores the world with their whole body and all their senses. To truly celebrate childhood, we need more than awareness. We need spaces, experiences, and communities that allow it to flourish.
Makkala Hubba, Bengaluru’s children’s festival, is one such space and experience.
Where play meets learning, and imagination meets the city
Makkala Hubba transforms the historic grounds of Freedom Park into a sensorial landscape for children. Through immersive, child-led art and play experiences, the festival brings alive the natural world—forests, oceans, butterflies, lakes, and Bengaluru’s ecological heritage.
About Makkala Hubba
Makkala Hubba is Bengaluru’s children’s festival that brings together art, play, nature, and imagination to create immersive, child-led experiences in the heart of the city.
- Dates: January 16–25, 2026
- Venue: Freedom Park, Bengaluru
- Audience: Children and their caregivers
- Format: Immersive installations, workshops, stories, and life-sized play experiences
Learning here is not instructional or outcome-driven. It emerges organically through play, exploration, and shared moments between children and the caring adults around them.
👉 Explore the full Makkala Hubba programme and visitor details:
https://blrhubba.in/subfestivals/makkala
Here, learning doesn’t arrive as instruction. It happens through touch, sound, movement, observation, and storytelling. Children move freely through installations that invite curiosity rather than outcomes. It is a space where city, nature, and imagination meet—where the pace slows down enough for childhood to breathe.
Makkala Hubba brings with it:
- Large-scale, immersive art and nature experiences
- Public footfall and visibility
- Strong artistic and ecological credibility
- A shared hub space that sets the tone for the season
Why Bachpan Manao is part of this
Bachpan Manao exists to make early childhood visible—in our homes, in our conversations, and in our public spaces. We believe the first eight years shape how children learn, relate, and imagine the world, and that this learning happens most powerfully through play, care, and everyday experience.
Makkala Hubba brings this belief to life. By turning the heart of the city into a space designed at a child’s pace, the festival shows what childhood can look like when it is not rushed, instructed, or contained—when play is treated as essential, not extra.
For Bachpan Manao, this is not a partnership of alignment, but of purpose. Makkala Hubba is a living example of what we stand for: childhood as a shared, public responsibility; learning as something that emerges through joy and exploration; and adults as participants, not managers, of a child’s world.
Supporting Makkala Hubba allows Bachpan Manao to move beyond conversation into experience—creating a visible, collective moment where a city slows down enough to notice childhood, and to celebrate it together.
From one festival to a citywide invitation
If Makkala Hubba is the heart of the celebration at Freedom Park, BM in a Box is how that spirit travels across Bengaluru.
BM in a Box is a co-created playbook of joy and connection —designed to help anyone host their own celebration of childhood. Schools, anganwadis, RWAs, libraries, cafés, parks, hospitals, community groups, and families can all use the playbook to create micro-events in their own spaces.
A storytelling circle.
A neighbourhood play jam.
A nature walk.
A lullaby session.
The playbook offers simple guides, activity ideas, stories, lullabies, printables, safety guidelines, and a directory of artists and storytellers—making it easy for anyone to host, regardless of scale or resources.
Through BM in a Box, the celebration of Makkala Hubba extends beyond Freedom Park into 100+ micro-events across Bengaluru. It allows children who may not be able to visit the festival to still experience play, storytelling, art, and wonder—right where they live.
A movement of care
Together, Makkala Hubba and Bachpan Manao transform one festival into a citywide movement:
- 1 hub event over 10 days
- 100+ micro-events
- 20+ ecosystem partners
- Thousands of moments of care across neighbourhoods
This is not a “come and watch” festival.
It is a come and play / host / create movement.
It is rooted in the belief that reclaiming childhood is a public project—and that every adult and every space has a role to play.
From Freedom Park to every neighbourhood, childhood comes alive.
Download the Makkala Hubba Brochure below
)
