The world has come to Tauranga with the return of the annual Tauranga Multicultural Festival to the Historic Village today.

Now into its 18th year, the festival is Multicultural Tauranga's signature event and both demonstrates and celebrate the organisation's motto: ‘Promoting cultural diversity and harmony in the community'.

Multicultral Tauranga treasurer Sue Burger says about 20 different cultures are being represented during this year's festival. A handful of the countries represented this year include Samoa, Greece, Korea, Russia, Czechia, Slovakia, Israel, Nepal, India and Poland.

'The festival has been pretty good. We are lucky this year, even though it's a little bit cloudy, we have plenty of people show up, unlike last year when the weather was quite rainy.”

So far the crowds have been entertained by musical and dance performances from the likes of the Samoan AOG, Athena and Israeli dance groups, the Czech and Slovak Club, Korean School of Tauranga, Arkadas Gypsy caravan dance group and Soor Nopoor.

While at midday, all the various countries represented at the festival embarked on a parade through the Historic Village.

Along with performances, the festival also features a children's area to keep the little ones happy with a bouncy castle, face painting and other activities, and a wide variety of stalls offering arts and crafts and food.

The Tauranga Multicultural Festival is on at the Historic Village on 17th Avenue until 4pm today. Entry is $6 for adults and $3 for children aged five to 16.

Arkadas Gypsy caravan dancers Miranda Waters, Rosemary Johns, Coral McKinlay-Earl, Alison Lowe, and Fabienne Scintu.
Amy-Rose, 7, and Kamila Gifkins from the Czech community.
Inna and Alexandra Vovk, Inna Kriger, and Natasha Slack on the Russian/Ukranian stand.
Andriana Avendano and Lance Litchfield on the Argentinian stand.
Lyly Angel, 9, from Cambodia.
Masti dance group members Nikita Lal, 6, Devan Patel, 6, Rhea Lal, 9, Dhruvi Patel, 9, and Tanisha Bhilcha, 9.
Andrejka Bennett, 7, in a Czech costume.
Children from the Kiribati community.
Brodie Ryall, 17, and Calla Sayers, 17, trying out the police riot gear.

Barbara Roth, Eva Fenn, Halina Footner, and Eva Niedzielski selling sweet Polish food.