A Year Built on Tradition

Every Atenean year has a rhythm: an opening, a season of formation, a stretch of competition and celebration, and a closing that sends everyone home changed. The traditions below are not one-off events. They return every year, and every year, they mean a little more to the students who keep them going.

Ateneo First Year Onboarding Program (AFYOP)

Before Ateneans make traditions, they are welcomed into them. The Ateneo First Year Onboarding Program is the Ateneo de Davao University’s two-day orientation for incoming first-years and transferees, run by the Office of Student Affairs and staffed by trained student volunteers who serve as ates and kuyas, guiding newcomers through their very first steps as Ateneans. Every year the program carries its own name and identity, 2025’s was Dayon, a Cebuano word of welcome, setting the tone for everything AFYOP is meant to be.

More than logistics, AFYOP is most students’ first encounter with the spirit, values, and community life of Ateneo, the moment the Ateneo de Davao University stops being a place you are applying to and starts being a place you belong to.

Ateneo University Fair

Once a year, the Ateneo de Davao University steps outside its own gates to meet Davao where it lives. Held at the Abreeza Mall Activity Center, the University Fair brings every academic unit together under one roof, Grade School through the College of Law, to welcome prospective students, parents, alumni, and the wider community into the Ateneo experience.

Expect performances, interactive exhibits, booths from across the Ateneo de Davao University, and honest conversations with current students and alumni about what Ateneo life is really like. It is the Ateneo de Davao University’s biggest invitation of the year: come see who we are, before you decide to become one of us.

Palarong Atenista

Since at least 2015, Palarong Atenista has been the Ateneo de Davao University’s intramural sports tradition, pitting the College’s schools and clusters against each other in a season of competition built on sportsmanship and camaraderie as much as victory. Each year carries its own theme and branding, recent editions have rallied around “Game On!” and “To the Top!”, and the games close with as much ceremony as they open, opening rites with torch-lighting and division processions, closing ceremonies with awards and performances like Sayawtenista.

At the 2024 opening, University President Fr. Karel San Juan, SJ described Palarong Atenista as a celebration of Mens Sana in Corpore Sano, a sound mind in a sound body, the same holistic formation the Ateneo pursues everywhere else, expressed here through sport.

Lighting of the Christmas Lights

Each December, the Ateneo community gathers at the Laudato Si’ Sunken Garden for the annual Lighting of the Christmas Lights, a quiet ceremony that opens the season of Advent on campus. Fittingly, the ritual takes place in a garden named for the Church’s own teaching on caring for our common home, faith, festivity, and ecology meeting in one place.