GlynSeptember left with a promise: October wins on pageantry. It keeps it in the first four days and then does not really let up, because this is the month the local calendar stops being a scatter of one-off fiestas and turns into a proper run of them, one after another, most staying inside the Old Town or close enough to walk.
If you are choosing when to come, this is the busier, noisier, more dressed-up alternative to September’s quiet. Bring comfortable shoes for standing on a kerb and a willingness to not understand half of what is being celebrated. That is the correct way to watch a Spanish fiesta.
Moros y Cristianos
Thursday 1 to Sunday 4 October. Streets across the town, heaviest around the Old Town and the seafront.
The big one, and genuinely worth planning a trip around rather than stumbling into. Companies of Moors and Christians in full costume parade in turn over four days, culminating in mock battles and gunpowder along the front. It is loud, it is slow-moving if you want a good spot, and it is one of the only times of year the Old Town’s streets fill with something other than tourists.
We have written the whole thing up on its own page, with the shape of each day and where to stand: Moros y Cristianos in Benidorm.
Festes del Roser
Wednesday 7 to Sunday 11 October. Centred on the Ermita de Sanç, out in l’Horta, a few kilometres inland of the town.
The Roser fiesta opens with a tardeo at the Ermita on the 7th — an afternoon session rather than a late one, which suits a small country chapel. The council’s own calendar also lists the Fira de Productes de la Terra running the 9th to the 11th, put on by the Comissió de Festes Majors Patronals: a produce fair rather than a market in the Wednesday-Sunday sense, so do not turn up looking for the usual stalls.
The Ermita de Sanç is not in the Old Town at all. It sits out in l’Horta, the old farming land a few kilometres inland, with the Casa del Llaurador farmhouse beside it, so take a taxi rather than setting off on foot from the Balcón. This is the week to find it.
Día de la Comunitat Valenciana
Friday 9 October. Regional public holiday.
A day off for the region, marking the arrival of King James I in the thirteenth century. Expect the same mix as any Spanish public holiday: some shops shut, most bars and restaurants open as normal, and a slightly fuller Old Town because locals from further inland have the day free too.
One thing worth knowing if you are booking around it. The 9th is a Friday and the Día de la Hispanidad on Monday the 12th is a national holiday, so Spain gets a four-day weekend in the middle of the month. Benidorm fills up with Spanish visitors rather than emptying out. If you want a quiet fortnight, this is not it; if you want the town at its liveliest with barely another British voice in the queue, it is exactly it.
Fira de Productes de la Terra
Friday 9 to Sunday 11 October. Run by the Festes Majors Patronals organisation.
A local produce fair tied to the patronal fiestas that come in November. The council’s calendar gives the three days and the organiser and nothing else, so we cannot tell you the pitch or the hours yet. Worth a look if you are here for the long weekend anyway, since it lands squarely inside it.
Día de la Hispanidad
Monday 12 October. National public holiday.
Spain’s national day. Banks and most shops shut, bars and restaurants open as usual, and the beaches busy if the weather holds. Paired with the regional holiday on the 9th it produces the long weekend described above, which is the single most useful fact on this page for anyone still choosing dates.
Rocío Chico
Friday 16 to Sunday 18 October. Organised by Benidorm’s Hermandad del Rocío.
Benidorm’s own small-scale version of Andalusia’s great pilgrimage, which is not something most visitors know exists this far up the coast. In previous years the brotherhood has processed out to the Ermita de Sanz and made a weekend of it, with shared meals, dancing and games for the children.
The council’s calendar confirms the three days. It does not publish the programme or the times, and the brotherhood’s own arrangements have varied year to year, so treat the shape of it as likely rather than fixed.
The Almudena run
Ofrenda de flores Sunday 18 October · Triduo Thursday 22 to Saturday 24 · Procesión Sunday 25.
The second half of October belongs to Nuestra Señora de la Almudena, and it builds in stages: the flower offering on the 18th, three days of devotions from the 22nd, and the procession itself on Sunday the 25th. The same Sunday the 18th also carries the Exaltación de Bellezas of the Hoguera La Cala.
These are parish events rather than spectacles laid on for visitors, which is precisely why they are worth catching. The council lists the dates and leaves the times to the churches, so ask at Sant Jaume i Santa Anna rather than trusting a listings site.
Dia de les Penyes
Saturday 24 October. Starts at the peñas, ends at the Julio Iglesias auditorium.
If you catch one thing in the back half of the month, catch this. The peñas — the town’s own social clubs — start the countdown to November’s patronal fiestas with a day that runs from a breakfast, through a parade to the church of Sant Jaume i Santa Anna and a mass for the Virgen del Sufragio, into a humorous musical contest at the auditorium that carries on well into the small hours. It is daft, it is entirely for the locals, and nobody will mind you watching.
Two honest caveats. The running order above comes from previous years’ coverage rather than a published 2026 programme, so times may move. And one local site puts the day on Sunday the 25th: the council’s calendar says the 24th, and the 24th is a Saturday, which is the day this fiesta always falls on. We have gone with the council.
XV Jornadas de los Arroces de la Tierra
Friday 16 to Sunday 25 October. Participating bars and restaurants across town.
Benidorm’s rice fortnight, now in its fifteenth year, organised by the tourism department with the local hospitality association ABRECA. Last year’s edition ran to two dozen restaurants doing their own take on a fixed-price rice menu, built around what actually grows and swims near here — bay fish and seafood, mountain meats and sausage, pumpkin and ñora peppers from the local vegetable plots.
The 2026 list of participating venues had not been published when we wrote this, so we cannot yet tell you which Old Town kitchens are in. Check Turismo Benidorm’s own site closer to the 16th, or simply ask in any restaurant that looks busy — most will know whether they are taking part even before it is confirmed online.
The Marcha Solidaria
Either Sunday 18 or Thursday 22 October, depending on the source — see below. Route through the town, organised by Anémona Marina Baixa.
Now in its twenty-fourth year, this is Benidorm’s breast cancer solidarity march, run by the local self-help group Anémona for women affected by breast and gynaecological cancer. This year’s T-shirt, in pink, was designed by a local teenager, Marina López Martínez, and is on sale for €12 with a fifth of the money going to cancer research charity Geicam.
We have a genuine conflict to flag here: the news agency covering the march’s own announcement gave the date as the 18th, while the council’s own website reports the 22nd, in the same week as its coverage of the same T-shirt launch. We have not been able to resolve which is right. If this matters to your plans, check Anémona’s own channels nearer the day rather than trusting either of us blindly.
Where the entertainment actually is
The 30th, from 8pm. Iglesia de San Jaime y Santa Ana, Old Town. Free, seats limited.
The Benidorm International Organ Festival returns from its summer break to the parish church at the top of the Old Town with a pairing of organ and saxophone from Francisco Amaya and Ignacio Gascón. It is free, it is inside a genuinely beautiful building most visitors walk past without going in, and it is precisely the kind of thing the strip does not do. It is not the last of the year: the festival closes with its Christmas concert on 18 December.
If you want the wider Old Town evening around it, the tapas hop along Calle Santo Domingo, the Plaça de la Constitució and Calle Tomás Ortuño — the streets just behind the Balcón — is still the best introduction there is. Walk it after nine, read the boards outside, and let the evening build itself rather than trying to plan it.
And if you fancy venturing into the New Town
Two things worth the trip out. Terra Mítica runs Halloween Horror Nights on the 3rd, 10th, 17th and 24th (9pm to midnight, three haunted attractions running), then opens late on Halloween itself, the 31st, from 11am to 1am with extra scares added for the day. Further along, Magic Natura runs a family Halloween from 2 October to 1 November, but it is put on for guests staying at the resort rather than for day visitors.
If theatre is more your evening, Llévame a Benidorm plays the Auditorio Rafael Doménech Pardo at the Centro Cultural on Sunday 4 October at 7pm — a comedy about two care-home residents making a break for the coast, in Spanish, with tickets through Vivaticket. Away from the fiestas, the council’s own listings also flag a fiesta concert in the Plaça de l’Ajuntament on the 31st, though details beyond the date had not surfaced when we wrote this.
Worth knowing for November
October’s pageantry hands straight over to Benidorm’s own week: the Festes Majors Patronals run from the 6th to the 11th, the town’s biggest fiesta and the one all that euro-coin money in September was raised for. Runners should also note the Benidorm Half Marathon on Saturday 21 November, now a fixture on the national athletics calendar. Both deserve their own visit rather than a rushed one squeezed in at the end of a trip.
If you would rather not think about dates at all, the Wednesday and Sunday markets keep running regardless of what fiesta is on. We have the full rundown, with bus numbers, on Market Days in Benidorm and Nearby.
Dates here come from Benidorm council’s own 2026 fiesta calendar, published in January, and from the organisers’ own listings, checked in the second week of September. Where we found a genuine conflict between sources, or a detail nobody had published yet, we have said so rather than guessed. If you spot something that has changed, tell us and we will fix it.
Most of what is on this page is a parade, a march or a concert with the door open for nothing — the best kind of October. If you want the rest of the trip worked out the same way, Benidorm on the Cheap prices up flights, parking, board and the parks from my own receipts across four seasons. £7.99, and every update to the 2027 edition is free once you have bought it. Have a look.
