- 12 minutes ago
Kuwait National Day is one of the most important occasions in the country’s annual calendar, celebrated with deep pride, strong cultural expression, and widespread public participation. It is a day that reflects the history, identity, and unity of Kuwaiti society, while also honoring the nation’s independence and modern progress. Across cities, neighborhoods, and homes, Kuwaitis mark the occasion with visible enthusiasm that blends tradition, family values, and civic spirit.
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00:00Kuwait puts two national holidays back-to-back on the calendar, and nobody treats them as
00:04separate events. One day rolls straight into the next, and the whole country moves through
00:09both like they're a single stretch of celebration. So how do Kuwaitis actually mark this stretch of
00:14days, what's on the streets, what's in the sky, and why do they pair them the way they do?
00:19Kuwait's national day lands on February 25, and the very next morning, February 26,
00:24brings Liberation Day. Kuwait celebrates its national day on February 25, followed immediately
00:31by Liberation Day on February 26. Let's start with the calendar, because the calendar is doing a lot
00:37of work here. Most countries give you one day to mark independence or nationhood, and that's it,
00:43one date, one flag ceremony done. Kuwait doesn't do that. Kuwait gives you two, stacked right on top
00:49of each other. And the whole country treats the pair as one long occasion, rather than two separate
00:54holidays. That just happened to fall close together. By the time you finish this video,
00:59you'll know exactly what fills those two days. There's the date structure itself,
01:03why February 25 and February 26 sit together, and what each one actually stands for. There's the
01:09fireworks, which light up the sky over the country, as part of the wider celebration. There's the air
01:15shows, jets tearing through the sky in formation, while crowds watch from below. There's the general
01:20festive atmosphere on the ground, the mood, the public gatherings, the sense of a country in
01:25celebration mode. And then there's the modern layer on top of all of it, how this entire event now gets
01:31captured, clipped, and pushed out across YouTube shorts and other short-form platforms, turning a
01:37national holiday into something that gets shared far outside Kuwait's own borders. So let's get into
01:42what each of these two days actually commemorates, because that's the foundation everything else sits on.
01:48National Day itself, on February 25, is Kuwait's marker of nationhood. The day tied to the anniversary
01:54of the country's founder, and the broader story of the modern Kuwaiti state coming into being.
02:00It's the day that gets treated as the birthday of the country in the way most nations treat their
02:05Independence Day. And based on how Kuwait Times covers it, the tone on the ground is unmistakably
02:11festive. This isn't a solemn, quiet day of reflection. It's loud, it's public, and it's built around joy.
02:17Kuwait Times own coverage frames the day around exactly that combination, festivities, and joy
02:23sitting side by side. As the defining features of how the country marks the occasion, the celebrations
02:28often include fireworks displays. That's the kind of detail that tells you what register this day
02:34operates in. It's not a day of parades and speeches alone. It's a day built for spectacle,
02:39for people to actually go outside and watch something happen in the sky above them.
02:43Now here's where the second day comes in, and where the pairing starts to make sense.
02:48February 26 is Liberation Day, and it doesn't commemorate the same thing National Day does.
02:54Liberation Day marks the end of the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, a different chapter in
02:59the country's history. A much more recent and much more painful one. Liberation Day is celebrated
03:05on February 26, commemorating the end of the Iraqi occupation. That occupation ran from August 1990,
03:12into February 1991. When Kuwait was invaded, and held by Iraqi forces, before an international
03:19coalition drove them out. The date that closes that chapter, is what gets marked on the 26th every
03:25year. So while the 25th is about the founding of the nation, the idea of Kuwait as a state,
03:31a flag, a ruling history. The 26th is about the survival of that nation. It's about the moment Kuwait got
03:37its sovereignty back, after nearly losing it entirely. Put those two next to each other,
03:42and you can see why nobody in Kuwait, treats them as two unrelated holidays. That just happened to
03:48share a week. One day is about being born as a nation. The next day is about staying one.
03:53That's not a coincidence of scheduling, it's the entire structure of the celebration.
03:58You can't really understand why the fireworks and the airshows, and the public gatherings,
04:02stretch across both days. If you think of them as separate events, they're not separate.
04:07They're one continuous national moment split across a sunset and a sunrise. Think about what
04:12that actually means, for how the days feel on the ground. If National Day were just a birthday-style
04:18holiday on its own, you'd expect the festive energy to peak on the 25th and taper off. Instead,
04:23the mood carries straight through into the 26th, because the country isn't just celebrating that it
04:28exists. It's celebrating that it's still standing. The joy on the first day gets reinforced by the
04:34relief and pride of the second. Pride in nationhood, remembrance of liberation, both wrapped into one
04:40uninterrupted stretch of celebration, rather than left as two disconnected dates on a calendar.
04:46This is really the anchor idea behind the whole two-day structure. It's not an accident that these
04:51dates sit next to each other. And it's not treated as two unrelated public holidays, the pairing is
04:57intentional. It lets the country hold both feelings at once, pride in what Kuwait is, and remembrance of
05:03what it almost stopped being. You get the celebratory tone of a birthday, and the weight of a liberation
05:08anniversary, back to back, feeding into each other rather than competing for attention. That's also why you
05:14see the same visual language, the same fireworks, the same public energy, carrying across both days rather than
05:21each day, getting its own distinct type of event. The Kuwait Times reporting on the occasion, describes a
05:27general mood of festivities, and joy that spans the period. Not a mood that resets overnight between
05:33one commemoration, and the next. And this is a pattern that shows up again and again, in how the
05:38celebration has been documented over the years. Back in 2019, Etihad Airways put together content,
05:45specifically built around Kuwait's National Day celebrations. An airline, notably not even a Kuwaiti one,
05:51recognizing that this occasion was significant enough to build a feature around. Etihad Airways has
05:57featured Kuwait National Day celebrations in their content. That's a small but telling detail,
06:03the celebration is visible enough and significant enough that it draws attention from well beyond
06:08Kuwait's own media and beyond its own borders. So to recap where we are before we go further,
06:13two dates, one continuous celebration. February 25th gives you the founding of the nation,
06:19and the festive tone that comes with it. February 26th gives you the liberation, the survival,
06:25the moment sovereignty came back. Together they form a single national moment, not two smaller ones
06:31stitched together out of convenience. But one deliberate pairing, that lets pride and remembrance run
06:36side by side. Now that the calendar logic is out of the way, the next question is the obvious one.
06:42What does this actually look like, when you're standing in Kuwait during these two days?
06:46What's happening above you, around you, on the ground and in the sky? Because the fireworks and
06:51the air shows, aren't just details mentioned in passing. They're the parts of this celebration that
06:56turn two dates on a calendar, into something people actually go outside to watch. And that's
07:02exactly where we're headed next, starting with what fills the sky. Let's start with the night sky,
07:07because that's where a lot of this celebration really announces itself. Once the sun
07:12goes down on national day, the fireworks take over. Footage compiled from displays over the country,
07:18shows what this actually looks like. Bursts of color stacked on top of each other,
07:22timed in waves, going up over the water and over the skyline at once. This isn't a five-minute show
07:27tucked into a corner of the city. Spectacular fireworks light up the sky. As part of the national
07:33celebrations, that footage matters here because it's not just describing a fireworks show,
07:38it's showing scale. Multiple points along the coast lighting up together, layered shells going
07:43off in sequence rather than one at a time. It's the kind of display that's built to be seen from
07:48far away, not just by people standing directly underneath it. And that's really the whole point
07:54of a fireworks show like this. It's not for one neighborhood, it's for a country, and for the
07:58water and buildings that this footage keeps coming back to as a backdrop. So that as much of the
08:03population as possible, can look up on the same night, and see the same thing at the same time.
08:09Now remember the festive tone we already established, the parades, the flags, the general
08:14mood in the streets. That gets set the moment February 25th begins, the fireworks are where
08:19that tone gets its loudest, most literal expression. All day the celebration is built out of colors on
08:25flags, decorations on buildings. People out in the streets in green, white, red, and black. When night
08:31falls, that same color palette essentially gets fired into the sky. It's the same energy, just moved
08:37from the ground to the air. If the daytime festivities are about being out among people, the
08:42nighttime fireworks are about everyone looking at the same thing at once. No matter where they are,
08:47that's the loop, festive tone in the morning, festive tone in the streets in the afternoon,
08:51and then a fireworks finale that turns all of it into a single shared visual at night. But fireworks
08:57are only half of the sky story. Because if the night belongs to fireworks, the day belongs to
09:02something louder and lower, airshows. Footage of Kuwait celebrations shows exactly this, aircraft
09:08cutting formations across the daytime sky. Crowds below with necks craned upward, the kind of spectacle
09:14that only works in daylight. When you can actually track the jets as they streak past, the skies are
09:20filled with impressive airshows during Kuwait National Day. Airshows work on a completely different
09:25register than fireworks. Fireworks are about color and light against a dark sky. They need the night
09:31to have any visual impact at all. Airshows need the opposite. They need visibility, they need contrast
09:36against blue sky. They need spectators to be able to make out formation lines, the smoke trails, the
09:42sheer speed of aircraft passing overhead. So where fireworks close out the day, airshows open it, or at
09:48least fill its middle hours. Giving people a reason to be outside, and looking up long before the sun goes
09:54down. Put those two together and you start to see the actual shape of the celebration. It isn't one
09:59event, it's a sequence. Morning and afternoon belong to the airshows and the street-level festivities,
10:05the parades, the decorations. The general buzz of two days that carry real historical weight.
10:11Then, as the light fades, the fireworks take over. Enclose the day out with one enormous,
10:16shared visual. Do that across February 25th and again, across February 26th. And what you get is a
10:2248-hour rhythm that alternates between daytime spectacle in the air and nighttime spectacle in
10:27the sky. With the streets full of people the entire time in between, it's less like a single
10:32ceremony and more like a coordinated back-to-back sequence. Airshow festivities, fireworks, repeat,
10:39stretched across the two dates that already carry the weight of founding and liberation.
10:43That structure is worth sitting with for a second, because it explains why footage of these two days
10:48keep circulating well past the actual dates. A single event is easy to summarize in one clip,
10:54a full date night sequence with formations of aircraft in the afternoon. And fireworks over
10:59the water at night gives you multiple distinct moments worth capturing, which is exactly what
11:04shows up when you look at how this celebration gets documented year after year, from different
11:10angles and different vantage points. And that brings us to a detail that's easy to skip past,
11:15but actually says a lot about how far this celebration reaches.
11:19Kuwait's National Day hasn't just been captured by local outlets and people on the ground. It's shown
11:25up in international coverage too, from well outside Kuwait's own media ecosystem.
11:30Back in 2019, Etihad Airways, the airline based in the UAE, not Kuwait, put out a video specifically
11:36built around Kuwait's National Day celebrations. Etihad Airways has featured Kuwait National Day celebrations
11:42in their content. Think about what that actually means, an airline from a neighboring Gulf.
11:48Country chose to build content around another nation's holiday. That's not something that happens
11:53for just any regional celebration. It happens when an event has enough visual identity, enough
11:59recognizable scale, that outside brands see value in referencing it. Etihad isn't a Kuwaiti state
12:05broadcaster, it isn't obligated to cover this. It's a commercial airline, and it looked at Kuwait's
12:11National Day, and decided the imagery, the fireworks, the airshows, the streets full of people,
12:17was worth putting in front of an international audience. That's really the significance here.
12:22It shows the celebration isn't a closed, local event that only makes sense if you already live
12:28there. It's got a visual language, color in the sky at night, formations in the sky during the day,
12:34people out in the streets the whole time. That translates, you don't need deep context to
12:38look at fireworks, over Kuwait's coastline or jets crossing in formation, and understand you're
12:44watching something big. The imagery does the explaining on its own. And when a foreign airline
12:49picks that up, and turns it into its own content. It's a small confirmation that Kuwait's pride in
12:55these two days, isn't just felt internally, it's visible enough, distinct enough, that it travels.
13:00So if you zoom out and look at everything covered so far, a pattern emerges. Every piece of footage,
13:06whether it's shot by local creators, tourists, or international companies, keeps circling back
13:12to the same three ingredients. Fireworks at night, airshows during the day, and running underneath
13:17both of them, a general sense of festivity, in the streets that doesn't let up for the full two days.
13:24Different cameras, different vantage points, different countries even, but the same three
13:28elements, over and over. That consistency is itself telling. It means this isn't a celebration
13:34that varies wildly, depending on who's watching or filming it. The Kuwait's sky lit up at night,
13:40sky filled with aircraft by day, streets full of people in between, holds steady no matter who's
13:46pointing the camera. But there's a question hanging over all of this footage, that's worth asking
13:51directly. Who's actually out there filming it, and who's carrying this celebration forward year after
13:56year? Because a lot of the material capturing these fireworks displays and airshows, isn't coming
14:02from state broadcasters or legacy news outlets anymore. It's coming from individual creators,
14:08from short-form video, from people posting clips that are seconds long rather than full segments.
14:13And that shift from institutional coverage to something more personal and more immediate,
14:18says something about who's actually driving this tradition today, especially among younger Kuwaitis
14:24who grew up with a phone in hand during these two days. That's where the story goes next.
14:29By 2025, a lot of the National Day footage circulating online wasn't coming from a broadcast van or a
14:36press badge at all. It was coming from a phone held up in a crowd, a short clip from Raman
14:41official,
14:41posted on February 21, 2025, captured the celebration, in exactly the format that's come to define how
14:49younger Kuwaitis experience the day now. Fast, vertical, seconds long, built for scroll rather
14:55than a broadcast schedule. That format matters more than it might seem at first glance. A YouTube short
15:01isn't just a shorter version of a documentary or a news segment. It's a different way of experiencing
15:06an event entirely, instead of sitting down. To watch a curated recap of fireworks and airshows put together
15:13by a production team. You're watching a single unbroken moment, someone captured on their own device.
15:19In real time, from wherever they happen to be standing. There's no narrator explaining what you're looking at.
15:25There's no editorial framing, telling you why it matters. It's just the moment itself, passed directly from
15:31one screen to another. That's a real shift in who controls the story of National Day. For decades, the way
15:38most
15:38people outside Kuwait would have encountered footage. Of the celebration was through something
15:43like the Etihad Airways content. Built around the day, or through travel and vlogging channels. Putting
15:49together polished packages of fireworks and airshows. Those are still out there, and they still matter,
15:55but short-form content adds something different. It's not curated by an airline's marketing team,
16:00or a travel vlogger's editing software. It's a teenager on the Cornish, holding up a phone.
16:05It's someone catching the exact second, a jet breaks formation overhead. It's unscripted,
16:11unplanned, and uploaded within minutes rather than edited over days. What that tells you is that the
16:17celebration isn't just being watched anymore. It's being narrated live by the people actually
16:23living through it. Every one of those clips is a small act of participation. Someone decided this
16:29moment was worth capturing and worth sharing. And in doing that, they became part of how the day gets
16:34remembered. Not just by their own family or friends, but by anyone scrolling past. Multiply
16:40that by however many people are out on the streets over those two days. Each one holding a phone,
16:46and you start to see how the tradition keeps renewing itself. It's not being handed down through a single
16:51official channel. It's being rebuilt every year, in real time, by thousands of individual choices.
16:57About what to film and what to post. But spectacle alone doesn't explain why a celebration lasts for
17:04generations. Fireworks are exciting to look at. Airshows are impressive in the moment. Neither
17:09one on its own tells you why February 25th and February 26th matter. To the people setting off
17:15those fireworks and flying those jets in the first place. That's where a different kind of content comes
17:21in. Content that isn't trying to capture the moment, but trying to explain it. That's exactly
17:26what an educational video, from the UV Educational Center, published on February 23, 2025, was built to
17:34do. Rather than showing the sky lit up or the crowds in the streets. It approaches National Day from the
17:40other direction, entirely. Walking through the reasoning behind the date, the history that sits
17:45underneath the display. It's not competing with the fireworks footage, or the airshow clips. It's doing a
17:51completely different job. And that job is, arguably, just as important to the survival of the tradition,
17:57as the fireworks themselves. Think about what happens if you strip the explanation away,
18:02and leave only the spectacle. You'd still have a spectacular two days. Bright skies, loud engines,
18:08crowded streets. But you'd have a celebration, that looks the same on the outside. Without necessarily
18:14carrying its meaning forward, on the inside. A child who grows up watching fireworks, every February 25th.
18:21Without ever being told, why we'll still enjoy the fireworks. But there's a real difference between
18:26enjoying a show, and understanding what you're actually marking. Educational content, is the piece
18:32that closes that gap. It's the mechanism by which the reason behind the celebration, gets passed. To the
18:38next set of hands, even as the format of the celebration itself keeps changing around it. Put those two
18:44things side by side. The short form documentation, and the educational explainer. And you start to see the full
18:51shape, of how this tradition actually sustains itself. It's not one thing, it's two things,
18:56running in parallel, doing separate but complementary work. The fireworks and air shows, are the
19:01performance. The part of national day that's loud, visual, and built to be experienced in a crowd.
19:07The short clips and shorts, are the broadcast. The part that takes that performance, and spreads it
19:12outward, instantly, to anyone with a phone. And the educational content, is the memory. The part that makes
19:19sure the performance, and the broadcast, still mean something once the noise dies down. That's the
19:24real answer to how Kuwaitis celebrate national day today. It isn't just a fireworks display. It isn't
19:29just an air show. It isn't just a piece of history taught in a classroom, or explained in a video.
19:35It's all three, happening at once, each one reinforcing the other. The spectacle gives people
19:40something worth filming. The filming gives that spectacle a life far beyond the two days,
19:45it actually happens on. And the education makes sure that when someone watches one of those clips
19:51years later, or teaches it to their own kids, the story behind it hasn't been lost along the way.
19:56Still, there's a layer of this celebration, that the footage doesn't fully show. And it's worth
20:01naming directly, rather than assuming it away. Fireworks and air shows are the parts of national
20:07day, that are easiest to film, and easiest to share. Which is exactly why they dominate the footage
20:12available online. But national celebrations like this one, almost always have a domestic
20:18side too. The food prepared at home, the clothes people choose to wear. The specific way families
20:24gather on those two days. Neighborhoods decorated in the national colors, before anyone even gets
20:30to the fireworks. None of that shows up clearly in a fireworks reel, or an air show clip. And it
20:35raises a real question, about what's happening just outside the frame of most of this footage.
20:40In kitchens, in living rooms, in the hours before anyone heads out to watch the sky light up.
20:46There's also a generational question sitting, right underneath, everything covered here.
20:51The shift toward short form video, and phone first documentation, didn't happen by accident.
20:56It tracks with a younger generation, that experiences almost everything through that format.
21:01National Day included. Whether that means the celebration itself,
21:05is changing in substance, or just changing in how it gets recorded. Isn't something the available
21:10footage can answer on its own. It's entirely possible that the streets, the food, the family
21:16gatherings look much the same as they did years ago. And the only real difference is that everyone
21:21now has a camera in their pocket, instead of leaving that job to a broadcaster. Or it's possible
21:26that something about the celebration itself, how long people stay out. How central the fireworks and
21:32airshows have become relative to other traditions, really has shifted alongside the technology.
21:38That's a genuinely open question, and one worth sitting with rather than answering with a guess.
21:43So here's where this leaves things. The visible layer of Kuwait National Day,
21:47is about as well documented as any national celebration can be. The date, the fireworks,
21:52the airshows, the two-day stretch running straight into Liberation Day. All of it captured from
21:57multiple angles, multiple years, multiple platforms. What's less visible, and genuinely worth exploring
22:04further, is everything sitting underneath that spectacle, the household traditions. The specific
22:09meaning passed down at a family level. The ways the celebration might be quietly shifting from one
22:15generation to the next. Even as the fireworks stay exactly as bright as ever. Two days, one nation.
22:22A sky that fills with fire at night and aircraft by day. And a celebration that, even with all this
22:27footage, all these clips, all this documentation, is still very much a living story. One that keeps
22:33being rewritten every year by whoever happens to be holding the camera. If you've got a closer view
22:38of what actually happens in those two days, the food, the traditions, the family side of it that
22:43doesn't always make it into a fireworks video. That's exactly the kind of detail worth adding to the
22:48conversation. Drop it in the comments, and if you want more stories like this one, subscribe for what's
22:53coming next.