The Benidorm Bulletin — Issue 70 | 26 July – 2 August 2026

From the Editor

The Old Town has only just swept up after Sant Jaume, the patron saint fiesta that filled the squares with parades, a verbena and fireworks over the weekend. If your ears are still ringing, you have our sympathy and our envy in roughly equal measure.

There’s no time to catch a breath, mind, because the resort is about to get a great deal louder. This is the week Benidorm swaps its tribute acts for the real thing, and we’ve the full story below.

The mercury is in the low thirties and the sea is a bath-warm 26°C. Our venue picks come with a fresh set of names this week, from a cliff-edge table to a proper gin bar. In short, peak Benidorm. Let’s get into it.

Low Festival Rolls In: Kasabian, The Hives and Editors, 31 July–2 August

For one weekend Benidorm trades its tribute acts for the real thing, and the whole resort will feel it.

From Friday 31 July to Sunday 2 August, the Guillermo Amor sports complex becomes one of Spain’s biggest open-air music sites for Low Festival. After passing 65,000 through the gates last year, it’s a genuinely major weekend, and this year it happens to be on Benidorm’s doorstep.

Leading the bill are Leicester’s own Kasabian, Swedish garage-rock veterans The Hives, and Editors, whose brooding anthems have aged rather better than most. They share the stages with a strong Spanish contingent, including indie favourites Love of Lesbian and the gloriously theatrical Fangoria. Across three nights it’s a real spread rather than one headliner and a lot of filler.

Day tickets start at around €39.99, with weekend passes on the festival’s official site. If you’re staying in the resort that weekend, expect the buzz to spill well beyond the stadium: fuller bars, livelier late nights, and a younger, louder crowd threaded through the usual summer mix.

What this means for you:

• Three nights of music, 31 July to 2 August, at the Guillermo Amor sports complex
• Day tickets from about €39.99; weekend passes on the official Low Festival site
• Expect busier bars, heavier traffic and later nights right across the resort that weekend

☀️ What’s On This Week

Beyond the big weekend on stage (the full story is above), the town hums along all week in high summer.

The Old Town, meanwhile, keeps its festive glow well into the week after Sant Jaume, and with the sea at 26°C both beaches stay busy until well after sundown. Poniente is the quieter of the two if the Levante crush isn’t your idea of a holiday.

Coming Up: August settles into high-summer rhythm, with the resort’s biggest crowds and warmest sea of the year.

🍺 Where to Wet Your Whistle

Three fresh picks this week, with the week’s live acts getting a section of their own just below.

The cheap pint: Hotel California, on Calle Gerona in the English quarter. When a UK reporter recently crawled ten bars along the strip, this was the cheapest of the lot: a pint of Cruzcampo for €1.90. San Miguel and Estrella run €2 to €3 either side of it, so the whole street is fair game, but this is the one to beat. A tip worth knowing: nearby Jumping Jacks holds its prices the same all evening, so there’s no sting when the sun goes down.

Cocktail o’clock: Bar 69, up in the Old Town on the Plaça de la Constitució at the top of the tapas streets. It carries the biggest cocktail list in Benidorm, much of it dreamt up in-house: a Lemon Meringue Pie, a Strawberry Cheesecake, a Marshmallow that arrives with a shot on the side. The prices are honest, the welcome is warm, and the sangria has a fair claim to being the best in town. Go for one, stay for three.

A table for a treat: D·Vora Gastrobar, perched on the cliff edge of the Old Town with a terrace jutting out over Levante Beach. Mediterranean cooking with a modern turn, and a signature creamy rice with red prawn and monkfish that’s worth the trip on its own. Book the terrace ahead.

🎭 Tonight’s Entertainment

The Old Town wins on atmosphere and tapas, but for the big tribute nights it’s the new town’s showbars that bring the noise, and this week the boards are stacked.

Into the week, Sinatra’s follows with a Tom Jones and the Morgan Tavern with a Coldplay, while the resident singers keep the smaller rooms going in between. Rockerfellas is a safe bet most nights for the big tributes, Pink and Take That among them, with proper adult comedy from the likes of Tony Scott.

Before you head out: start times shift and line-ups change nightly, so the boards outside each venue and their Facebook pages are the final word. Turn up for the act you came for, then stay for whoever’s on next.

☀️ Weather Watch — Late July / Early August 2026

The hottest stretch of the year, and behaving exactly as you’d hope.

What to pack: Light everything, a proper hat, and more sun cream than feels sensible. The midday sun is punishing now, so take the local approach and seek shade in the worst of it rather than fighting it. The sea at around 26°C is bath-warm, so swimming is a joy from early morning. Carry water whenever you’re out, and doubly so if you’re heading to the festival.

❓ You Asked…

Q: We’re staying up in the English zone. Is it worth heading down to the Old Town for dinner?

Very much so, and it’s easier than you’d think. The Old Town’s tapas streets behind the Balcón del Mediterráneo are the best eating in Benidorm, and they don’t really get going until nine, so there’s no rush. It’s a pleasant walk along the front once the evening cools, a short hop on the number 1 or 2 bus, or a cheap taxi if there’s a few of you. Go down early, wander, and let the evening find you.

Q: It’s forecast into the low thirties. Is late July too hot for the kids?

It’s hot, but manageable with a little planning. Keep the little ones out of the direct sun between one and five, lean on the shade, and treat water and hats as non-negotiable. The sea at 26°C is the best free cooling system going. Most families find beach mornings, a long lunch indoors and evenings back outside works far better than trying to power through the afternoon.

🔥 Hot Topic

Two Benidorms in One Weekend

For one weekend this summer, Benidorm is going to be two towns at once. Out by the Guillermo Amor stadium, thirty-odd thousand people will be watching Kasabian and The Hives. A mile away, families will be building sandcastles on Levante as though nothing at all is happening. Both are entirely real, and both have every right to the place.

This is the resort’s great trick, and it’s rather underappreciated. Plenty of destinations pick a lane: family, or party, or culture. Benidorm simply refuses to choose, and somehow makes room for all of it within a few square miles. The festival crowd and the bucket-and-spade brigade will barely cross paths, and both will go home convinced they had the definitive Benidorm holiday.

There’s a lesson in that for anyone who still sneers at the place. Benidorm isn’t one thing done badly. It’s several things done at once, at a scale that mostly works. You may not love every version of it, but you’d struggle to find another resort that carries so many holidays under one sky and rarely drops the tray.

💡 Tip of the Week

Shift Your Day the Spanish Way

In this heat, the single best change you can make to your holiday is to move the whole day back a couple of hours. Take the beach early while the sand is still bearable, disappear indoors for a long, lazy lunch through the fierce hours of one to five, then come back out in the evening when the town does. The Old Town tapas streets don’t really wake up until nine, and there’s a reason for that: it’s cooler, livelier and a good deal more Spanish once the sun is off the terraces. Fight the afternoon and it wins. Work around it and you get two good halves to every day.

🤔 Did You Know?

That blue-and-white balustrade where everyone stops for a photo, the Balcón del Mediterráneo between the two beaches, stands on the bones of a castle. The Punta Canfali headland once held a coastal fortress, thrown up to defend the fishing village against Barbary pirates, and largely destroyed during the war with Napoleon in the early 1800s.

The cannons are long gone, but the locals still call the spot the Castell. So the most photographed viewpoint in Benidorm is, in the end, a ruin with a very good sense of timing.

Community Noticeboard

⭐ Who’s your favourite? — tell us the Benidorm bar, restaurant or café that looks after you best, and come and tag them over on our Facebook page.

⭐ Join the chat — our Facebook group is the friendliest corner of Benidorm online. Come and say hello.

A festival worth the noise, a sea worth swimming in, and an Old Town at its summer best. Next week we settle into full August, crowds and all, and point you at the best of it.

Thanks for reading. Pass it on to anyone with Benidorm on their mind.

Until next time — keep the sun on your face and the sangria cold. ☀️

— The Benidorm Bulletin Team