> Quick view: the Star Karnival Cuti-Cuti Malaysia Sabah leg at Imago Shopping Mall, Kota Kinabalu finished on 16 August 2026 — the Batik Air 15% flight discount ended with it. The six-state roadshow has three stops left: Sunway Carnival Mall, Penang (24-27 September), Sunway Pyramid, Selangor (23-25 October) and Plaza Merdeka, Kuching (30 October-1 November). All free to enter.

The Imago KK leg is over — here's what it was

Star Karnival Cuti-Cuti Malaysia (SKCCM) 2026 is the second edition of a nationwide travel carnival run by Tourism Malaysia with Star Media Group, in support of the Visit Malaysia 2026 campaign and its "Destinasi Indah, Harga Rahmah" value-travel push.

The Sabah leg ran 14-16 August 2026 at Imago Shopping Mall, Kota Kinabalu, with 41 booths selling local attraction deals, hotel promotions and resort packages. It closed on 16 August. Everything that made it worth a trip was tied to those three days:

  • Batik Air's exclusive 15% discount on flight bookings, available only at its Ground Floor Centre Court booth
  • Free Batik Air merchandise, while stocks lasted
  • A lucky draw for four return flight tickets — three Kota Kinabalu-Subang, one Kuala Lumpur-Langkawi

None of those carry over. Batik Air is the campaign-wide official airline partner and has staffed a booth at more than one leg — it was there at the Kuantan opener in July as well, where its representative pointed visitors to group fares, student fares and in-flight meal add-ons rather than a headline percentage, and listed a domestic network that includes Penang, Langkawi, Johor Baru, Kota Baru, Kuching, Kota Kinabalu, Tawau, Sibu, Bintulu, Subang and KL. So a Penang booth is a fair bet. What is *not* established is the offer: Tourism Malaysia has published nothing about what Batik Air will do at Penang, Selangor or Kuching, and the 15% rate was described as exclusive to the Sabah edition. Do not assume a 15% booth discount is waiting for you.

The three stops that are still ahead

The full six-state schedule was set at the launch on 24 June 2026 at Menara Star, Petaling Jaya, and the dates have held so far — Pahang, Johor and Sabah all ran as announced.

  • Penang — 24-27 September 2026, Sunway Carnival Mall. The only four-day leg of the tour. Worth knowing before you plan: Sunway Carnival Mall is at 3068 Jalan Todak, Pusat Bandar Seberang Jaya, 13700 Seberang Jaya — that is mainland Penang (Seberang Perai), not the island. From George Town it is a bridge or ferry crossing, not a ten-minute drive.
  • Selangor — 23-25 October 2026, Sunway Pyramid (Orange Zone). The busiest catchment on the tour, and the one Klang Valley readers can reach on the Kelana Jaya LRT plus the BRT Sunway Line.
  • Sarawak — 30 October-1 November 2026, Plaza Merdeka, Kuching. The closing leg, and the only remaining stop in East Malaysia — the practical replacement if you missed the Sabah one.

What actually happens at a Star Karnival stop

Across the legs run so far, the format has been consistent: a mall atrium filled with tourism sellers rather than a ticketed expo hall. The Kuantan opener carried 36 vendors and exhibitors — travel agencies, hotel operators, adventure and attraction operators, transport companies — and Sabah carried 41. Expect:

  • State tourism boards and community-based tourism operators
  • Hotels and resorts with carnival-window rates, plus attraction ticket deals
  • Tour and adventure operators — diving and snorkelling packages, wildlife trips, river cruises, farm and tea-plantation experiences
  • Out-of-state exhibitors, which is the part most people underrate: the Kuantan leg had Terengganu nasi dagang, Sarawak kek lapis and Sabah-style cendol on the floor, and the biggest ticket deals on offer in Johor were for Melaka (Encore Melaka) and Perak (Belum Rainforest Resort) — so you are not only shopping the host state
  • Online travel platforms and rental operators, not just single venues: the Sabah leg carried booths from Trip.com, MalaysiaTravel.com, Fastrack Car Rental, RV Motorhome and Borneo Tours and Travel, and the Pahang leg had Only World Group selling Wet World Shah Alam and The TOP Penang tickets
  • Lucky draws and giveaways running through each day

What carnival booth prices have actually looked like

Tourism Malaysia never publishes booth offers in advance, so the only honest guide to what Penang will be worth is what operators actually charged at the three legs already run. Three were reported with real ringgit figures, and we checked each against the operator's own published price:

  • Encore Melaka (Johor leg). The 360-degree rotating-theatre show sold at a carnival rate of RM68 for adults and RM138 for foreign visitors. Its own website lists RM78 adult, RM48 senior/child/OKU, RM158 non-Malaysian — so the carnival saved RM10 (13%) on an adult ticket and RM20 on a foreigner ticket, and nothing at all on a child ticket, which stayed at the standard RM48.
  • Kuantan 188 (Pahang leg). The tower's general manager put a flat 50% off tickets on the table for the roadshow — the deepest discount reported at any leg. Worth keeping in proportion, though: its own portal prices the Observation Deck at RM13 adult / RM10 child for Malaysians Mon-Thu and RM23 / RM18 on Fri-Sun, public holidays and school holidays, so 50% is a saving of roughly RM5 to RM11.50 a head.
  • Desaru Fruit Farm (Johor leg). Its "special promotion" for the carnival was RM200 per adult and RM150 per child aged 3-11 for a half-day tour, with the date left open. On the farm's own online store, comparable half-day combos (farm tour plus fruit box or lunch, plus a 20-minute ATV ride) run RM95 to RM188, and the full-day tour is RM368. The carnival price sat at or above the top of its own online range.

The lesson, and it is the single most useful thing to take to Sunway Carnival Mall: a carnival price is a *negotiated event price*, not automatically a discount. Two of the three published figures beat the operator's own website; one did not. Pull up the operator's site on your phone at the booth before you pay.

Two things that genuinely are worth more than the percentage:

  • Flexible dates. Desaru Fruit Farm let carnival buyers pick their own visit date, and Kuantan visitors were offered Fraser's Hill and Chermerkaw Resort (Raub) packages on a pay-a-deposit-now, travel-within-six-months basis. That flexibility is rarely on the public rate card.
  • Talking to the operator. Belum Rainforest Resort's team, for instance, was telling Johor visitors it runs up to 80% occupancy just before school holidays and arranges pick-ups from Penang or Ipoh airports, the Kuala Kangsar ETS station and Gerik bus stop — the kind of logistics you would otherwise spend an evening emailing about.

Who this is worth a trip for — and who should skip it

Worth going if you are already planning a domestic trip in the next few months and have not booked. Carnival pricing is a walk-in negotiation with the operator, so the value is highest on packages you would otherwise buy at full price — resort stays, dive packages, multi-day tours.

Skip it if you only want flights. Airline booth discounts at these events are narrow (the Sabah one was 15%, with no published route list or minimum spend), and a fare sale from any carrier will usually beat it. And skip it if you cannot commit on the day — these are event-window rates that are not honoured after the carnival packs up.

The fine print worth knowing

  • Free admission at every leg, within mall trading hours. Both Sunway Carnival Mall and Plaza Merdeka trade 10am-10pm daily; Imago did too. Tourism Malaysia does not publish separate carnival hours.
  • Booth-level offers are never published in advance. The 15% Batik Air discount at Imago only became known once the Sabah leg was under way, and the same is likely for Penang, Selangor and Kuching.
  • As of 5 September 2026 — 19 days out — Sunway Carnival Mall's own events feed still does not list the carnival, and neither does Sunway Pyramid's for the October leg. Both feeds are otherwise current (Sunway Carnival is running a Mid-Autumn Festive Fair and a highlights reel dated to 23 September), so this is the malls simply not having posted it yet, not a dead page. The dates come from Tourism Malaysia's release, not from the venues.
  • Plaza Merdeka's silence proves nothing at all. The Kuching mall's website has not published a new event or promotion since June 2025, so do not read its blank 2026 calendar as evidence about the 30 October leg either way. Its trading hours are confirmed 10am-10pm, Monday to Sunday.
  • If you are a MyKad holder from Penang, Kedah, Perak, Perlis or Kelantan, check The TOP Penang's own standing offer before buying at the carnival. Only World Group — the operator that was selling The TOP Penang tickets at the Kuantan booth — is separately running RM10 per attraction for northern-state ICs until 30 November 2026, against public prices of up to RM78. A carnival booth is unlikely to beat that.
  • Tourism Malaysia's two releases give two different themes for the same campaign — the 24 June launch says "Discover, Experience, Explore", the 4 July Kuantan release says "Explore, Experience, Excite". The tagline, "Destinasi Indah, Harga Rahmah", is consistent across both.

If you're in Sabah and this is why you came

The carnival is not coming back to Kota Kinabalu this year. For the same kind of thing — published Sabah tour and hotel pricing you can actually book today rather than a three-day window — the Amazing Borneo AMZDEALS code runs to 31 December 2026 and lists real ringgit prices. Kuching, 30 October-1 November, is the nearest remaining carnival.

Check Tourism Malaysia's Star Karnival Cuti-Cuti Malaysia 2026 announcement for the official schedule, and the host mall's own channels closer to each date for booth hours and activity line-ups.

Related reads

*Schedule, venues and the 41-booth Sabah figure verified against Tourism Malaysia's media releases of 24 June and 4 July 2026 and The Star's 16 August 2026 report on the Sabah leg. Booth prices re-verified on 5 September 2026: the Encore Melaka and Desaru Fruit Farm carnival rates and the Belum Rainforest detail come from The Star's 2 August 2026 report on the Johor leg, the Kuantan 188 discount and the Batik Air network from its 9 July 2026 report on the Pahang leg, and each was checked against the operator's own current published prices at encore-melaka.com, dff.world and ticket.kuantan188.com.my. Venue listings re-checked the same day on Sunway Carnival Mall's, Sunway Pyramid's and Plaza Merdeka's own websites.*

*Cover image: a Sabahan cultural performance at Imago Shopping Mall, Kota Kinabalu — the venue that hosted Star Karnival Cuti-Cuti Malaysia's Sabah edition. Photo: Imago KK Times Square via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.*