From 31 October to 13 November 2026, Senegal will host the Youth Olympic Games, bringing around 2 700 young athletes to the country for the first Olympic sporting event to be held on African soil. The competitions will span Dakar, Diamniadio and Saly, with 25 official sports on the programme.
For Lloyd Murray, President of Continent Tours, the Games are also part of a broader shift in how international travellers are seeing the city. “Dakar has stopped being the airport. It used to be the place you landed before going somewhere else… Travellers now want three or four nights in the city itself, and they want those nights to be good ones.”
For Ken Aïcha Sy, curator and cultural producer of Wakh’Art, the city’s appeal derives from its unique flavours of artistry. “What continues to inspire me about Dakar is, first and foremost, its ability to create within constraints.”
Visible everywhere, from the street to the studio, from fashion and music to architecture and food, Dakar’s creative life is not neatly contained within galleries or institutions. It spills out into everyday life, where people adapt, improvise and build new possibilities from what is available.
A City with A Million Stories
Loman Pawlitschek, the founder of Loman Art House, arrived in Dakar in 2007. She and her family initially came for three weeks, simply to decide whether they could imagine living there.
The decision did not take long. She says, “From the moment my feet touched the ground at the old airport, something happened: I fell in love.”
She recalls that it was one o’clock in the morning, the air humid and the lighting dark, yet the city was alive and pulsating. Nightclubs were spilling into the streets, and mere hours later the call to prayer was rising across the rooftops as a new day dawned.
Loman remembers feeling enveloped by the place, and around three weeks later she had packed up her life in Johannesburg and moved to Dakar. Nearly two decades on, the city has changed dramatically, but it has never become entirely predictable. “Dakar is constantly unfinished,” she says. “That can be difficult, but it is also what makes the city alive.”
Construction and deconstruction flow in an endless cycle. New buildings rise, businesses open, members of the Senegalese diaspora bring new ideas and investment, and neighbourhoods keep evolving. For visitors, Dakar is much more than beaches, monuments, or museums; it is a city of contrasts and overlapping worlds.
No Checklists Needed
Ken Aïcha Sy is wary of the idea that visitors should search for one definitive version of Dakar. “Ultimately, I would not advise anyone to search for a single, ‘authentic’ Dakar. There are many Dakars existing simultaneously.”
That is reflected in some of the experiences Continent Tours recommends to travellers. Assane Camara, Senior Products Executive at Continent Tours, points visitors towards the Lebou villages of Ouakam and Ngor, where traditional fishing communities remain firmly woven into the fabric of the capital.
“I send people to the Lebou villages inside the city, Ouakam and Ngor. They are fishing villages with their own narrow streets and their own social and political organisation, and they sit in the middle of the capital. Most visitors have no idea they are there.”
Dakar rewards movement; one moment you might be walking through a gallery, the next you are in a market, an artist’s studio, a fashion boutique, or a crowded street where new aesthetics are just about to take their first form.
Ken recommends approaching the city through its different layers rather than attempting to tick off a list of cultural institutions.
A Bountiful City That Blurs Boundaries
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Dakar’s contemporary creative identity is rooted in a much longer history of artistic and intellectual experimentation. For Ken, understanding that history is essential, as Senegal’s artistic past has not always remained physically accessible within the country. Works, archives, and documentation have travelled abroad, leaving parts of the story dispersed across international museums, collections, and institutions.
Her research project, Survival Kit, began with a question about how a country maintains access to its own cultural memory when its material traces are no longer at home.
“Knowing this history gives us the possibility not simply to inherit it, but to question it, challenge it and build from it.”
The younger generation is not reproducing what came before, but choosing to transform it, combine it with international influences, and create new platforms.
The boundaries between visual art, fashion, music, photography, design, and performance grow increasingly porous. A designer might draw from vernacular architecture. A visual artist might collaborate with musicians or craftspeople. A photographer might move into film. The street, says Ken, is often where these new visual languages appear first.
The Gallery with Many Facets
Loman Art House began as a space with a strong ambience and gradually grew into a gallery, workshop, café, boutique, garden, pool, terrace, and place to stay. It developed organically, attracting musicians, artists, friends, and visitors long before it became the multifaceted space it is today.
Loman never came from a conventional art-world background. She didn’t grow up visiting galleries or collecting art. Instead, she found herself creating, sculpting, teaching, and curating through a process of trial and error.
Today, visitors might come to see an exhibition, eat, stay overnight, work remotely, attend a concert, practise yoga, or simply spend time in the garden. It is less a traditional gallery than a living ecosystem, sustained by artists, cooks, makers, gardeners, hosts, maintenance staff, and everyone else who keeps it functioning.
Planning Your Days in Dakar
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For travellers visiting during the Youth Olympic Games and the surrounding cultural season, a little planning will go a long way.
Loman recommends dividing the city into geographical bites rather than attempting to cross Dakar repeatedly in a single day.
The western side can include Loman Art House, the Phare des Mamelles, the African Renaissance Monument, the Petite Corniche, Secret Beach, Île de Ngor and Village des Arts.
Another day can be dedicated to Médina and Plateau, with time for the Museum of Black Civilisations, the National Theatre, galleries, cultural spaces, and the ferry to Gorée Island.
Be sure to factor the city’s traffic into your plans. Late-afternoon journeys can become extremely slow, so an early dinner or cocktail stop may be better than trying to navigate the roads at their busiest time.
The World Is Coming
The Youth Olympic Games will introduce Dakar to visitors who may not otherwise have considered Senegal for a trip. That creates an opportunity, but Ken believes 2026’s value should extend beyond international visibility. Dakar already has creativity. What it needs is stronger support for the people and places sustaining it: the artists, designers, musicians, cultural workers, independent spaces, galleries, and collectives.
For Lloyd, it’s really about what happens after the crowds have gone.
“The opportunity is whether Senegal converts the awareness into travellers who come in an ordinary February, when there is no event at all, because they remember the city looked like somewhere they wanted to be.”
For Loman, the city’s appeal is the warmth of the people, the sense of movement and the feeling that something new is always taking shape. Dakar is ambitious, imperfect, resourceful, and endlessly in progress, and while it does not present itself as a finished product, this is likely why it can be so compelling.
The world is coming to Dakar in 2026, and she is ready to welcome it with open arms.
