Thirty JFC students carried five performances to Kenya's biggest education arts stage, earning second- and third-place finishes and extending a national success story that has been growing since 2023.
For JFC Munene College of Health Sciences, the journey to Bungoma was never simply about bringing home a trophy.
It was about walking onto one of the biggest competitive stages in Kenyan education, representing the College with confidence, celebrating culture, testing years of preparation against some of the country's finest performers—and proving, once again, that JFC students can excel far beyond the classroom.
From 5 to 10 August 2026, a team of 30 students from the JFC Music and Drama Club represented the College at the 98th Kenya National Music Festival at Kibabii University in Bungoma County.
They arrived carrying more than costumes, songs and carefully rehearsed dance routines.
They carried a reputation built over four consecutive years of national participation.
They carried the expectations created by previous JFC teams that had stood on national stages before them.
And they carried one simple responsibility:
to give their very best.
They did.
JFC Takes Five Items to the National Stage
The 2026 team represented the College in five competitive items, showcasing both Kenya's rich cultural diversity and an international traditional dance form.
The entries were:
Class 1015N – Borana Folk Dance
Class 775 – Borana Folk Song
Class 1013N – Tugen Folk Dance
Class 1051N – Scottish Traditional Dance, a Western traditional cultural dance
Class 1016N – Kikuyu Folk Dance, performed by a mixed team of male and female students
Across the five performances, JFC secured second- and third-place positions, ensuring the College remained among the leading performers in highly competitive national categories.
The Borana Folk Song, Class 775, secured second position, a result also recorded in the College's public festival updates.
This year, there was no first-place finish.
But that tells only a very small part of the story.
Sometimes Success Is Standing on the Podium Again
Competition at national level is different.
By the time a team reaches the Kenya National Music Festival, it is no longer competing with ordinary performances. It is meeting institutions and performers who have emerged among the strongest from across the country.
The Kenya Music Festival itself describes the competition as a Ministry of Education talent-development initiative with more than 600 competitive categories spanning music, dance and elocution. Competition progresses through various levels before culminating at the national festival. The organisers describe it as the largest festival of its kind in East and Central Africa.
The 2026 edition was particularly large.
Kibabii University reported a record number of participants, with universities alone accounting for approximately 130,000 performers. Participants came from pre-primary institutions, schools, TVET institutions, universities and other organisations, with representation from different regions of Kenya as well as participants from Uganda.
Against that level of competition, finishing second or third nationally is not a failure to win.
It is evidence that you belong among the best.
For JFC, that distinction matters.
Our students went to Kibabii knowing that previous teams had set a very high standard. They performed before national adjudicators, competed against strong institutions and still returned with podium positions.
They may not have brought home Position One this time, but they returned having defended something equally important:
JFC's place on the national music and cultural stage.
The 98th Festival: A Celebration Bigger Than Competition
The 2026 Kenya Music Festival ran from 1 to 14 August 2026, with Kibabii University serving as the principal host venue in Bungoma County. The year's theme was centred on enhancing the creative economy through artistic expression for sustainable development.
The festival eventually culminated in a State Concert at Bungoma State Lodge on 14 August.
It was much more than a competition for marks and positions.
When Principal Secretary for Higher Education and Research Dr Beatrice Inyangala visited the festival on 10 August, she emphasised the place of music and creative arts in education, talent development, cultural preservation and national cohesion. She also highlighted the ability of such platforms to help learners discover talents and possible career pathways.
That message closely reflects what the Music and Drama Club has come to represent at JFC Munene College.
We are a health sciences college.
Our students spend their academic lives preparing for careers that demand knowledge, practical competence, discipline and responsibility.
But they are also dancers.
Singers.
Actors.
Performers.
Creators.
Leaders.
And young people carrying cultures, stories and talents that deserve a stage.
This Journey Did Not Begin in 2026
What makes the 2026 performance particularly meaningful is the history behind it.
The story stretches back to 2023, when JFC Music and Drama Club made its breakthrough to the 95th Kenya National Music Festival at Dedan Kimathi University of Technology in Nyeri.
JFC's archived public updates record the excitement of making it to the national stage at Dedan Kimathi.
That year's national festival brought together students from schools, colleges, technical training institutions, polytechnics and universities. Kenya News Agency reported that more than 130,000 learners were expected to participate under the theme “Nurturing Talent for Innovation and Development.”
For JFC, getting there mattered.
The College was still building its cultural programme and establishing itself competitively. Reaching the national level demonstrated that a young Music and Drama Club from a health sciences institution in Thika could qualify to perform alongside long-established institutions.
What happened next transformed that first appearance into a tradition.
2024: JFC Goes for Gold in Eldoret
The Club returned stronger in 2024 for the 96th Kenya Music Festival, hosted in Eldoret.
This time, JFC did not simply participate.
The College emerged Position One nationally in Class 1015N, Borana Folk Dance—a performance publicly celebrated by the institution as an exemplary national victory.
The 96th edition brought competitors to Moi Girls High School in Eldoret, with the national Gala held there on 13 August 2024. The Ministry of Education used the festival to reinforce the role of creative talent within education and the emerging creative economy.
For the young JFC club, the Borana victory changed expectations.
National participation was no longer enough.
The students had demonstrated that they could actually win at the highest level.
A trophy was important, but what it represented was even bigger.
It showed the next group of JFC students that winning nationally was possible.
2025: The Scottish Dance Trophy Comes Home
Then came 2025.
At the 97th Kenya Music Festival in Meru County, JFC took another major step.
This time, it was the College's Scottish Traditional Dance that captured national attention.
The result?
Position One. Gold medal. National trophy.
JFC's own public announcement captured the moment simply: the national trophy for the Scottish Dance was coming home.
Independent coverage from the 2025 festival also documented JFC Munene College students presenting the Scottish dance during the national competition in Meru.
The 97th festival ran in Meru County in August 2025 under the theme “Enhancing the Creative Economy through Artistic Expression for Sustainable Development.”
That Scottish Dance victory carried special significance into 2026.
When a new JFC team stepped forward at Kibabii University to compete again in the Scottish traditional dance category, they were not performing an ordinary item.
They were carrying the legacy of a national-winning performance.
That creates pressure.
The audience may see a few minutes on stage.
What they do not see are the weeks and months behind those minutes: learning movements, correcting mistakes, synchronising a team, repeating sections until they become instinctive, preparing costumes, building stamina and finding time to rehearse while remaining students with academic responsibilities.
That is why the 2026 podium finish should be understood in context.
A trophy won yesterday does not guarantee a trophy tomorrow.
Every national festival brings new performers, stronger teams, new interpretations and different adjudication.
You have to compete again.
And JFC did.
2026: Five Items, Thirty Students, One College
By the time the 30-member delegation arrived in Bungoma this August, the Club was no longer the newcomer that first travelled to Nyeri in 2023.
It had history.
Borana performance had become part of that history.
Scottish dance had become part of that history.
National medals had become part of that history.
But the 2026 team also expanded the story.
Alongside the Borana Dance and Folk Song and the returning Scottish performance were Tugen and Kikuyu folk dances, giving the team an even wider cultural repertoire.
There is something powerful about that.
Students studying at one health sciences institution in Thika were able to step onto the same stage and respectfully interpret cultural traditions from different communities.
Borana.
Tugen.
Kikuyu.
And, beyond Kenya, Scottish cultural dance.
That is what cultural education can achieve when it is approached seriously.
It allows a young person to appreciate a culture beyond their own.
It encourages research, observation, discipline and respect.
And when students perform together, different backgrounds cease to divide them. For those few minutes on stage, they become one team.
The People Behind the Performances
Successful clubs are not built during festival week.
They are built quietly throughout the year.
They are built during rehearsals when nobody is watching.
They are built when a student struggles with a movement and is asked to repeat it one more time.
They are built when performers have to balance class attendance, examinations, practical sessions and rehearsals.
They are built when disappointment is followed by another rehearsal rather than resignation.
Much of the continuity of the JFC Music and Drama Club has been shaped under the leadership of Club Patron Mr. Willys Onyango, assisted by Madam Belinda Chelimo and Madam Carolyne Muisyo.
Through the years, the three have played important roles in coordinating, mentoring and developing the Club, helping successive groups of students understand that talent alone is never enough.
National competition requires organisation.
It requires discipline.
It requires commitment.
It requires students to learn how to accept correction.
And it requires a team culture strong enough for people to work together toward a performance in which every individual's timing can affect everyone else.
Their work has helped ensure that when one group graduates or leaves the College, the Music and Drama Club does not start again from zero.
Experience is passed forward.
Standards are inherited.
New students join something that already has a story.
That is how institutions build traditions.
From the First Nationals to Four Consecutive Years
Look at the journey together:
2023 introduced JFC to the national stage at Dedan Kimathi University in Nyeri.
2024 produced a national Position One in Borana Folk Dance, Class 1015N, in Eldoret.
2025 brought home the national Gold medal and trophy in Scottish Traditional Dance, Borana Dance and Borana song from the festival in Meru.
And in 2026, thirty students travelled to Kibabii University with five items and returned with second- and third-place national finishes, including Position Two in Borana Folk Song.
Four years.
Four national festivals.
Different students.
Different host counties.
Different performances.
But one continuing JFC story.
We Did Not Lose Because We Did Not Finish First
There is an important lesson in the 2026 results, especially for our students.
Success cannot be defined only by the years when you stand in Position One.
If that were true, competition would teach very little.
Sometimes success is winning gold.
Sometimes it is improving.
Sometimes it is surviving very strong competition.
Sometimes it is standing on the podium knowing you gave everything you had.
And sometimes success is returning home in second or third position and immediately asking:
What can we do better next time?
That is the attitude we celebrate in this year's team.
We recognise that the competition was extremely strong.
We acknowledge that we did not defend every first position we may have wanted.
But we are immensely proud that our students competed among the country's best, represented JFC in five national items and remained podium performers.
There is dignity in that achievement.
There is also motivation in it.
The standard has been set.
The next team now knows what is possible.
More Than Health Sciences
The success of the Music and Drama Club also says something important about the education we want students to experience at JFC Munene College.
Training competent health professionals remains central to who we are.
But competence alone does not describe a complete person.
A student needs confidence.
Teamwork.
Communication.
Discipline.
Creativity.
Cultural awareness.
Leadership.
The courage to stand before hundreds of strangers and perform something they have spent months preparing.
Those qualities matter on a stage.
They also matter in hospitals, communities, workplaces and leadership.
The Kenya Music Festival's own national philosophy increasingly connects artistic expression to talent development, cultural preservation, national cohesion and the creative economy.
For us, that means supporting a student's professional dream does not require silencing their creative one.
A student can learn healthcare and still dance.
Study science and still sing.
Prepare for professional practice and still perform.
One talent does not have to cancel another.
To Our 30 Representatives: You Made Us Proud
To the thirty students who represented JFC Munene College at Kibabii University:
You carried our name hundreds of kilometres from Thika to Bungoma.
You walked onto a national stage.
You faced strong competition.
You performed five different cultural items.
You came home with national podium positions.
And, most importantly, you added your own chapter to a story that began before many of you joined the Club.
The medals and certificates will eventually be stored.
The costumes will be folded.
Photographs will move down our social media timelines.
But what you have contributed to the history of this Club will remain.
Years from now, another group of JFC students will prepare for the Kenya Music Festival.
They will hear about the first team that made it to nationals in 2023.
They will hear about the Borana champions of 2024.
They will hear about the Scottish Dance national trophy of 2025.
And they will hear about the 2026 team of thirty students that took five items to Kibabii and refused to leave the national podium even in one of the toughest competitions the Club had faced.
That is legacy.
The Journey Continues
The curtain has closed on Kibabii 2026, but the work does not end there.
We return to Thika with lessons.
With experience.
With greater hunger.
And with another group of students who now know what it feels like to represent their College at national level.
Position Two is motivation.
Position Three is motivation.
Yesterday's Position One is motivation.
Every result gives us something to build on.
Our goal is not merely to collect trophies.
It is to keep developing students who can stand confidently anywhere, represent their institution with dignity, appreciate cultures different from their own and understand that excellence is built through consistency.
Since 2023, JFC Music and Drama Club has kept showing up.
Nyeri.
Eldoret.
Meru.
Bungoma.
The venues have changed.
The performers have changed.
The competition has become stronger.
But the ambition remains.
We perform. We learn. We improve. We return.
Congratulations to the JFC Munene College Music and Drama Club Class of 2026.
You may not have brought home Position One this time.
But you kept JFC where it has worked hard to belong:
among Kenya's national performers, among the podium finishers, and among institutions proving that student talent deserves to be discovered, nurtured and celebrated.
The Falcons continue to fly.
