The Benidorm Bulletin — Issue 78 | 20 – 27 September 2026

From the Editor

The lead story this week is not news. It is me, asking for a favour, and I have put it at the top on purpose, because the last two times I asked further down the page, almost nobody noticed.

After it comes a quick round-up of the week, one Saturday planned from breakfast through to a drink twenty floors up, the comedians on the strip, and an argument about a water park that shuts while it is still twenty-seven degrees.

One in 250

Two asks in a fortnight. No photographs, and one countdown posted in the group. So this week the lead story is a favour.

Two weeks ago I asked whether anybody had a photograph we could use of the Three Kings parade, the November fiestas or the Wednesday market. Nobody sent one. Last week I asked the 250 or so of you with a countdown running to press one button and post your number in the Facebook group. One of you did. You know who you are, and thank you.

Every week the emails come in telling me how much you love the newsletter and how informative it is. It takes time to put together, and yes, it costs money. I am not complaining about that. I put my heart into it and I enjoy doing it. I would not mind it paying for itself one day, but I can afford to fund it and I am happy to.

But this is meant to be a group, and at the moment it looks rather like one person doing all of it. So the next time I ask, please help a guy out. And help everybody else in the group, because what you send in ends up helping the next person planning their trip.

None of it takes more than a minute. Here are the three things.

📰 The Week in Brief

Tap to pay on the tram is coming, but not yet. FGV, who run the tram, have put €6.8 million out to tender for new ticket barriers that will take a contactless bank card, a phone or a QR code. No start date has been given. Until then it is still the Móbilis card from the station window, and your bus card still does not work on the tram. The difference is explained in what buses, trams and taxis actually cost here.

Alicante airport is getting bigger. The government has approved €868 million for it in the airport investment plan for 2027 to 2031. Nothing changes for your next trip, or probably the one after.

Six more hybrid buses have joined the town fleet this week, and the council says they are easier to get on and off.

Storm warnings came and went. Orange alerts were out along the coast midweek. Weather Watch has what the week ahead looks like.

Aqualandia shuts for the year on Sunday. I have a view on that, and it is in Hot Topic.

☀️ What’s On This Week

A week that starts with a charity run, has a road closure in the middle and ends with two neighbourhood fiestas and a rock festival on the same weekend.

For everything beyond this week, go to the What’s On page. I update it as things are announced rather than writing it once and leaving it, so check it before you book and again the week before you fly.

And the markets. The big municipal market is Foietes, Wednesday morning, number 1 bus. Rincón de Loix runs Wednesday and Sunday, number 6. Both finish at half past one and both are better before ten. The Rastro at El Cisne is Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, nine till two. Every market for miles, with the buses, is on the market days page.

Coming Up: October opens with the big one. Moros y Cristianos runs from Thursday 1 to Sunday 4, with the Gran Entrada on the Saturday evening. After that come the Festes del Roser from the 7th to the 11th, the Día de la Comunitat Valenciana on Friday 9th, the veterans’ volleyball world championship from the 6th to the 10th, and the rice fortnight, Arroces de la Terra, from 16 to 25 October. The whole fiesta year is on the festivals hub, and the dates are on the fiesta calendar.

🍺 Where to Wet Your Whistle

This week the three picks are one Saturday, in order. Breakfast, then lunch in a square most people walk straight past, then a drink twenty floors up before the Iberia Festival. None of them has been in this newsletter before, and all three are from our own reviews rather than an aggregator’s.

Breakfast: Café Leroy, Avenida Alcoi, Pasaje de Gavina, next to The City Bar and a short walk from the beach. A Welsh couple who have lived here for around fifteen years run it, and it passes the only test that matters for a full English abroad: the sausages arrive hot, fresh and properly English. It does pancakes, toasties and baguettes as well, the coffee is good, and they serve Yorkshire Tea, which will settle it for some of you.

Prices are firmly at the cheap end and it is step-free inside. It opens Monday to Saturday, half past eight until three, and is closed on Sundays, so this is a Saturday pick rather than a Sunday one. Read the sausage test.

Lunch: Tapería La Mina, Avenida de Ruzafa 2. Stand with Café Creu behind you, face Ale-Hop, and walk up Ruzafa for about a hundred metres. A small square opens on your right with a cluster of cheap tapas bars full of people who live here. La Mina is on the corner.

It is the antidote to Tapas Alley. Order your drink on the left of the bar and a tapa comes with it, then tell them how many more you want. When I wrote it up, the most we had ever spent there in a day was eleven euros, and their own site now starts tapas at €1.30. It has been renovated, it is all on one level with no steps, and it has an accessible toilet, which is rarer in the Old Town than it should be. It opens every day, twelve until four and seven until eleven. The full review is here, and the Old Town tapas guide covers the rest of the run.

Before the Iberia Festival: Planta 20, on the twentieth floor of the Hotel Madeira Centro, on the Plaza Triangular between the Old Town and the English end. You do not have to be staying there. Walk through reception to the lifts and the bar is on your left at the top. Non-guests cannot use the glass lift up the outside of the building, though our review found you can hop in if it is already in use.

It is a lounge bar with a terrace and a proper cocktail list, and the reason to go is the view over the bay at sunset. Listings say it opens from late afternoon, so it suits a drink before an evening that starts at six. The auditorium is within walking distance. Our rooftop bars guide has Planta 20 and the other high terraces.

🎭 Tonight’s Entertainment

Last week was about the circuit. This week I am suggesting one night off from the tributes, because the strip has comedians too, and nobody ever sends you to them.

This is drawn from a bigger piece of work: every live-music venue in the Old Town, room by room and night by night. Nobody else has that written down in English. The three rooms below are down on the strip, which is a twenty to thirty minute walk from the Old Town, mostly along the seafront.

The Benidorm Palladium is the one where the whole evening is comedy of some sort. Gareth Fulton’s comedy hypnotism opens it at about quarter to nine, Levi G’s comedy drag follows at ten, and Gary George does stand-up at around half past eleven. Carmen Snake’s adult show comes on very late and is exactly what it sounds like. It is not one for the in-laws.

Rockerfellas has Tony Scott, the comedian, at around quarter past ten on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, with music on either side of him. The Drifters are on Sunday and Monday, Aisha Nicole’s Adele on Sunday, Max Fisher’s Elvis on Monday and Tuesday, She’s Pink on Tuesday, and the Boy Band Experience at midnight. You get a proper laugh in the middle of a normal night out.

Sinatras is my pick if you cannot give up the tributes. It has Max Fisher’s Elvis on Sunday and Monday, Benidorm Tom doing Tom Jones on Monday and Tuesday, Meatloaf, CUJAM with UB40’s hits, Kool & the Gang on Sunday and Bruno Mars on Monday. One Man Two Tone plays mod and ska late on Monday for anybody still standing.

The usual caveats apply. So far the venues have only filed Sunday to Tuesday. Later in the week comes back empty, which means they have not got round to typing it up, not that nothing is on. Treat every printed time as a rough guide. The chalkboard outside is always right, and the internet often is not.

☀️ Weather Watch — Late September

The season turned midweek. The forecast for Wednesday to Friday was thunderstorms at near-certain odds, which is late September doing what it does on this coast. The good news is that it clears for the start of this week: the state forecaster has Sunday cloudless, and Monday and Tuesday at twenty-seven with no more than broken cloud and only a small chance of a shower. Nights are down to around twenty, and you will notice it walking home.

What to pack: summer clothes, a proper layer for the evenings, and something that will survive a downpour, because in late September a dry forecast is only good for a few days at a time. The sea still holds most of its summer warmth and will be the warmest thing about an early morning. If you are going to the festival on Saturday, the layer is not optional.

❓ You Asked…

Q: Is Moros y Cristianos worth changing our dates for?

If you can move by a few days, yes. It runs from Thursday 1 to Sunday 4 October and it is one of the genuinely spectacular things this town does. The day to be here is Saturday, for the Gran Entrada, when both armies parade in full costume with their bands. It starts early evening, it often runs three hours or more, and it does not hurry, so get a kerbside spot early and take something to sit on.

If you can only manage the end of the week, the Friday morning Diana parade is smaller and easier to photograph, and Sunday ends with the Retreta through the Old Town and fireworks. Two warnings. The black powder is louder than any description prepares you for. And the town fills, so book now rather than next week. Every day of it is on the Moros y Cristianos page.

Q: Is anything happening for World Tourism Day on the 27th?

Not for you, I am afraid. Benidorm marks it with the Ciudad de Benidorm tourism awards, and the ceremony is on Friday the 25th. It is an institutional ceremony rather than anything put on for the public. I have found nothing public announced for the Sunday itself. I gave my view on this year’s winners in Issue 75, including the one I could not defend, which was an award for a burger advert. I have not changed my mind.

🔥 Hot Topic

A Year-Round Resort With a Summer Water Park

Aqualandia closes for the year on Sunday 27 September. The tourist board has it open from ten until seven every day until then. The forecast for the start of this week is twenty-seven degrees, and the sea is still around twenty-five.

And it may not be alone. The tourist board’s own listing gives Mundomar’s 2026 season as ending on 6 September, which would mean it has already shut. Older listings say the end of October, so if you have promised the grandchildren the sea lions, check with the park before you set off.

The case for closing is not a stupid one. Water parks live on children, and Spanish children went back to school a fortnight ago. Every lifeguard and every till still has to be staffed on a quiet day, and nobody running a business should be told to lose money for the sake of a brochure.

But this is a town that sells itself as the resort that never shuts. The hotels stay open all winter. So there is something a bit daft about the biggest family attraction in town locking its gates at the end of September, just as the grandparents arrive with the weather still on their side.

My position: open for one more week at the end of October, when most English schools are off for half-term, and count who comes through the turnstiles. If nobody does, they have lost a week and settled the argument. If people do come, Benidorm has something to sell in October that the rest of this coast has not. Reply and tell me whether you would go.

💡 Tip of the Week

A Third Off Town-Centre Parking, if You Have a Car and a Week

Until Tuesday 29 September, the council and Telpark are taking 34 per cent off parking bundles at three town-centre car parks: Mercado, Tomás Ortuño and Ametlla de Mar. You buy a Multipass of five, ten or twenty visits in the Telpark app and link your number plate to it. After that a camera reads the plate as you drive in, so there is no ticket to lose.

Here is who it is for. If you have a hire car for a week or more, you are staying in or near the centre, and you drive out most days, this is built for you. If you only want to park once for a trip to the shops, it is no use to you, because the discount is on the bundle. I have not been able to find the standard price of a single visit, so I cannot tell you in euros how much you save, and I would rather say so than guess. If you drive electric, charging at the same three car parks is 30 per cent off until the end of the year.

Worth knowing while we are on number plates: Benidorm’s low emission zone works off your plate as well, and hire cars are not exempt. How that works for a visitor, and who sorts out the registration, is all on our low emission zone page. If you have not booked the car yet, Rentiago on the reader card hires with zero deposit and zero excess.

🤔 Did You Know?

The auditorium Duncan Dhu will play on Saturday is named after a man whose first big hit came from a Benidorm contest. In 1959 the town started a song festival, modelled on the Italian one at Sanremo, to find new singers and put Benidorm’s name about. In 1968 it was won by a young man called Julio Iglesias, singing La vida sigue igual, “life goes on the same”.

He was not supposed to be a singer at all. He had been a goalkeeper in Real Madrid’s youth side until a serious car accident in 1963 ended his football career. While he was in hospital, a nurse gave him a guitar to get the strength back into his hands. Five years later he was standing on a stage in Benidorm with a song of his own, and the rest of his career followed from there.

The festival faded, but the town never quite let it go. It came back as the Benidorm Fest, which now chooses Spain’s Eurovision entry, and there is a bust of Iglesias in the town. So when somebody tells you Benidorm has no culture, you can point out that it more or less invented the career of a man who sold records on a scale most of the acts on the strip are paid to imitate.

Community Noticeboard

⭐ Photographs, please: the Three Kings parade, the Patronals or the Wednesday market. Reply and attach one off your phone. First-name credit, or none if you prefer.

⭐ Post your countdown in the group: open it, press Share this, post the picture. Open your countdown.

⭐ Driving here? The low emission zone runs on number plates, hire cars included. Everything you need is on the low emission zone page.

⭐ Moros y Cristianos in your phone: add it, and any other fiesta you care about, to your calendar at benidormoldtown.co.uk/fiestas.

⭐ Coming out with a wheelchair or a scooter? The accessible Benidorm page covers what works, what does not and what it costs. Tell me where I have got it wrong.

⭐ Missed an issue? Every back issue is on the site, free to read, no sign-in.

This week: a favour, a round-up, a Saturday that runs from Yorkshire Tea to a twentieth-floor sunset, and a water park that closes with the weather still on its side. Next week it is Moros y Cristianos, and the town changes completely for four days.

Thanks for reading. And if you have a photograph, a countdown or a friend who is going, you know what to do now. One reply from each of you would change this completely.

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

— The Benidorm Bulletin Team