Oakdale Rugby Festival

The Oakdale Rugby Festival is hosted each autumn by Hoër Landbouskool Oakdale in Riversdale, the celebrated agricultural school of the Hessequa where the Garden Route begins. While the big city festivals chase the glamour names, Oakdale's festival has carved out something rarer: a stage where the country schools and smaller rugby communities of South Africa take centre stage, playing in front of proper crowds in a welcoming holiday atmosphere that has become the event's trademark.

The host school itself is one of South African rugby's great outliers. With fewer than 400 boys, Oakdale fields sixteen teams, plays one of the toughest fixture lists in the country, and has sent a steady stream of players to Craven Week, SA Schools and beyond. That same spirit runs through the festival: opening fixtures set in advance, then strength matched against strength across three days of rugby, with visiting sides drawn from across the Cape, the platteland and in recent years from overseas, Welsh academy Cardiff and Vale College joining the 2026 edition.

For the schools of the Overberg, the Karoo and the Southern Cape, the Oakdale Festival is the weekend the season points toward: a gathering built on farm rugby's oldest virtues of physicality, hospitality and gees.