The North Face Taps China’s Silk Road for The Horse Year Festival

As The North Face gears up for its 60th anniversary in 2026—coinciding with its zodiac year of the horse—the brand has kicked off a culturally immersive celebration in China’s Gansu province. Framed as The Horse Year Festival, the three-day event (Dec 23–25) ventured far from the metropolises of Shanghai or Beijing and instead retraced Silk Road landmarks, positioning the brand as not only an outdoor gear specialist but a modern cultural navigator.

The festival’s central theme, “Exploration Is Our Destiny,” wasn’t just a tagline—it was a multi-sensory narrative that spanned museums, highland hikes, historical ruins, and contemporary product drops. By connecting three historic cities—Lanzhou, Tianzhu, and Shandan—the brand constructed a time-traveling, place-based campaign that blurred the lines between expedition and experience, between consumer and culture.<