GlynStill to come in October
Until Sunday 25 October. The rice days, the XV Jornadas de los Arroces de la Tierra. Eighteen bars and restaurants take part, each with its own menu at between €25 and €55, and every menu has to include a local starter, a rice main course, a pudding and a drink. Taking part: Arrocería La Marina, Bodegón Aurrera, Bolikki, Brasería Aurrera, Cervecería El Mesón, Club Náutico, Esturión, Jardín Mediterráneo, L’Aroma, Arrocería La Mejillonera, La Cava Aragonesa, La Fava, La Pinta Beach, La Posada del Mar, Mal Pas, Malaspina, Marisquería El Puerto and Taberna Andaluza. Ask at each for its menu and price.
Thursday 22 to Sunday 25 October. The Almudena run finishes: three days of devotions from the 22nd, then the procession on Sunday the 25th. Parish events, so ask at Sant Jaume i Santa Anna for times.
Saturday 24 October. Dia de les Penyes, the peñas’ own day, ending at the Julio Iglesias auditorium. On the same day the Boca del Calvari museum runs its walking route through the places in Benidorm that Sylvia Plath wrote about on her honeymoon here in 1956, and this one is in English. It is free but the places are limited: book by email to museobocacalvari@benidorm.org, giving the number of people. The meeting point for this date has not been published.
Sunday 25 October. The clocks go back in the early hours.
Friday 30 October, 8pm. The International Organ Festival returns to Sant Jaume i Santa Anna with organ and saxophone. Free, seats limited.
Saturday 31 October. Halloween. Terra Mítica opens from 11am to 1am, with a last Horror Night on the 24th as well.
November is when Benidorm stops performing for its visitors and throws a party for itself. Everything the town has done since January, the summer verbenas, the dinners, September’s line of euro coins along a tape, has been raising money for one week, and this is it.
Most British visitors never see it, because it falls after the season has closed and before the Christmas lights go up. That is rather the point. The flights are cheap, the days are often warm enough for shirtsleeves, and for six days the Old Town belongs to the people who live in it. Bring a coat for the evenings.
Festes Majors Patronals
Friday 6 to Wednesday 11 November. Across the town: the church of Sant Jaume i Santa Anna, Poniente beach and the streets in between. Free.
The town’s own fiesta, in honour of its patron, the Virgen del Sufragio, and of Sant Jaume. Its centrepiece is the re-staging of the finding of the Virgin on Poniente beach on Saturday 7 November at 5pm: the story of the empty boat that came ashore in 1740, was burned for fear of plague, and left an unharmed image of the Virgin in its ashes. The official tourist board gives that time. It is a fine thing to watch a beach that spends most of the year under sunloungers being used to re-enact a miracle.
This year’s standard-bearer is the Unión Musical de Benidorm, the town band, chosen because it is celebrating its hundredth year. Expect to hear it.
Now the honest part. The 2026 programme had not been published when we wrote this, so beyond the dates and the Saturday re-enactment we cannot give you times. We have written up how the week usually runs, day by day, from the last official programme, on its own page: Festes Majors Patronals: Benidorm’s Own Week. Treat its times as a guide, not a timetable.
Two practical notes. The mascletàs, the daytime barrages of pure noise, move this year to the Avenida de Foietes, because their usual home on the Avenida Jaime I is taken up by the works on the underground car park; the council agreed the move in August. And Monday 9 and Tuesday 10 November appear as Benidorm’s local public holidays, though we found that on a calendar site rather than from the council itself, so do not plan a bank visit around it either way. The council’s calendar also lists Nuestra Señora de la Almudena on the 9th, with no further detail.
Festa de la Carxofa
Saturday 14 November. Plaça de la Constitució, Old Town. Free.
If the Patronals are the town’s week, the Carxofa is the Old Town’s day, and it is the one entry on this page that happens entirely within a few minutes’ walk of the Balcón. The residents of the Plaça de la Constitució have kept it going for more than thirty-five years, reviving a tradition from before the Civil War, and it falls on the Saturday after the Patronals, as though the neighbourhood had not quite had enough.
The carxofa is an artichoke, a large papier-mâché one, hung up over the square in the morning and burned late at night. In between, going by last year’s edition and the tourist board’s listing for this one: a flower offering to the patron, a sardine lunch in the street, a parade, games of pilota, the local hand-ball game, contests, and a DJ. The tourist board puts the burning, the cremà, at midnight. The 2026 timings for the rest of the day have not been published.
The council’s calendar confirms the date. Last year it ran on the Saturday after the Patronals too, which is the shape this fiesta always keeps.
The Benidorm Half
Saturday 21 November. Half marathon and 10K, finishing in the square in front of the town hall.
Last year’s edition drew more than nine thousand entries across the two races, and several British running clubs wrote up their trips afterwards, so you may well find yourself cheering a neighbour. The date comes from the race’s entry listing; the organisers had not published the 2026 timetable when we checked.
For a sense of shape, in 2025 the 10K set off at 5pm and the half marathon an hour later, from the Avenida de la Comunitat Valenciana, finishing at the town hall square on the edge of the Old Town. That makes the Old Town end of the evening busy and the bars around it busier. If you are not running, the finish is the place to stand.
The organ festival: Franz Hauk
Friday 27 November, 8pm. Sant Jaume i Santa Anna, Old Town. Free, seats limited.
The festival’s second solo organ recital of the year, from the German organist Franz Hauk. The concerts run on the last Friday of the month, start at eight, and are free until the church is full, so arrive early. It is the best excuse there is to go inside a building most visitors only photograph from the Balcón. The programme was announced in February and the council has not published the pieces.
Menjars del Nostre Poble
Thursday 26 to Sunday 29 November. Participating restaurants across town.
The last of the council’s six food weeks this year, and the newest: it began in 2025 for Benidorm’s seven hundredth anniversary and has been kept on. The idea is the town’s own traditional cooking rather than a fixed theme. The list of restaurants taking part, and any prices, had not been published when we wrote this, so we cannot tell you which Old Town kitchens are in.
The Christmas square opens
Saturday 28 November. The square in front of the town hall.
The council’s calendar marks the opening of the Plaza de la Navidad on the 28th, which is the start of the town’s Christmas season. Last year it opened at seven in the evening with a light-and-sound show, the switch-on and fireworks, and a house for Father Christmas in the Hort de Colón. Nothing for 2026 beyond the date has been announced, so treat last year as the likely shape rather than the plan. Local press report that the lights will reach more streets and squares this year.
All Saints’ Day
Sunday 1 November. National public holiday.
Todos los Santos falls on a Sunday this year, so it will make less difference to opening hours than usual.
And if you fancy venturing into the New Town
Fancy dress day, Thursday 12 November. The day after the Patronals finish, the British bars of the New Town fill the streets with people in costume from lunchtime until late. It is not in the council’s programme and nobody officially announces it, but it always falls on the Thursday after the Patronals, and every listing we found agrees on the 12th. If you are flying in for it, come a day early: the Patronals close with the float parade and fireworks on the Wednesday evening, and most fancy-dress visitors never know they missed them. Our Patronals page has two readers’ photographs of the day.
Michael, starring Ben, Sunday 15 November. The Michael Jackson tribute show plays the Benidorm Palace, between UK theatre dates. A ticket listing gives €35 for the show or €45 with dinner, with tables shared if necessary; the Palace’s own site is the place to confirm before you book.
Worth knowing for December
December opens with the puente: Constitution Day on Sunday the 6th and the Immaculate Conception on Tuesday the 8th, which fills the town with Spanish visitors. The organ festival closes with its Christmas concert on Friday 18 December, and the Unión Musical marks the end of its centenary year on the 19th.
The markets carry on regardless of any of this. The full rundown, with bus numbers, is on Market Days in Benidorm and Nearby, and every fiesta date for the year is on the Benidorm Fiesta Calendar, ready to add to your phone one at a time.
The fiesta dates here come from Benidorm council’s own 2026 fiesta calendar, published in January, so individual days can still move. Everything else comes from the organisers’ own announcements and the official tourist board, checked on 12 October. Where something had not been published, we have said so rather than guessed. If you spot something that has changed, tell us and we will fix it.
