GlynMost people who come to Benidorm never see a fiesta. They come in July, they leave in July, and the only procession they witness is the one heading to the beach at ten in the morning.
That is a shame, because the town has a proper calendar of its own, and almost none of it is put on for visitors. Benidorm’s fiestas are run by associations, brotherhoods and neighbourhood commissions, most of them decades old, funded by their own members through the year. The council publishes the dates in January and then largely gets out of the way.
What follows is that calendar, month by month, with the dates confirmed for the rest of 2026 and the pattern for everything else. If you are planning a trip and want to land on something worth seeing, this is where to start.
How the calendar actually works
Three things are worth knowing before you book around a date.
Some fiestas never move. The Three Kings is always 5 January. Día de la Hispanidad is always 12 October. The Día de la Comunitat Valenciana is always 9 October. You can book against those.
Others move every year because they hang off Easter, which is itself movable. Carnival, the Burial of the Sardine and Semana Santa all shift by weeks between one year and the next.
And a handful genuinely have no date until a few weeks beforehand. The council’s own calendar marks these as Pend. — pending. When you see a listings site giving you a confident date for one of those, it has been guessed. We would rather tell you it is unpublished.
January — the Three Kings, and Sant Antoni
5 January, every year. The Cabalgata de Reyes is the biggest night of the Spanish children’s year, comfortably bigger than Christmas Day. The floats come through with the three kings throwing sweets into the crowd, and the following morning is when presents are opened. Benidorm runs a second, smaller cabalgata out at the Ermita de Sanz on the same evening.
Sant Antoni, mid-January. 15 to 17 January in 2027. Sant Antoni is the patron of animals, and the association behind it is one of the most active in the Old Town. It runs several other events through the year, including two that turn up later in this list.
Also in January: the crowning of the Festes Majors Patronals queens, and the first of the falla commissions’ exaltación evenings.
February — Carnival and the Burial of the Sardine
Carnival moves with Easter. In 2026 the children’s carnival and the popular carnival both fell on 21 February, with the Entierro de la Sardina — the Burial of the Sardine — on the 24th.
The Sardine is the odd one, and the better one. A mock funeral procession carries a sardine down to the sea and burns it, marking the end of carnival and the start of Lent. It is half solemn and half ridiculous, which is the point.
February also brings the Crida, the shout that opens the Fallas season, and the Pregón that opens Semana Santa.
March — Fallas, and the finding of the Virgin
Fallas, 16 to 19 March in 2026. Valencia does this on a scale Benidorm cannot match, but Benidorm has its own commissions — Falla Benidorm, Falla Rincón de Loix and Falla Els Tolls — and the ninots go up and then go up in flames on the night of the 19th. If you have never seen a falla burn, it is worth arranging a trip around.
16 March. The commemoration of the finding of the Virgin, with the flower offering two days before it. This is the town’s own story rather than a regional one, and it points forward to the Festes Majors Patronals in November.
Semana Santa ran from 29 March into 5 April in 2026 and will move in 2027.
April and May — the smaller ones
April is quiet by Benidorm standards and better for it. La Mona with the peñas at the start of the month, the Mig Any of the Moros y Cristianos in the middle, and the Festa de la Creu turning over into May.
May brings the Mercado Medieval, 8 to 10 May in 2026, which takes over the Old Town streets with stalls, food and a certain amount of enthusiastic costume. It is the single easiest fiesta for a visitor to walk into. There is also the Carta Pobla on the 9th, marking the town’s founding charter, and San Isidro from the 15th.
The Romería del Buen Pastor had no published date on the council’s 2026 calendar.
June — Fogueres de Sant Joan
19 to 24 June. The bonfires of Saint John, and the shortest night of the year. Alicante’s Hogueras are the famous ones, but Benidorm holds its own verbena on the 23rd, and the beach on midsummer night is something to see whether or not you go anywhere near an official event.
Corpus Christi falls on the 7th, with the Casa de Andalucía’s romería at the end of the month.
July — the Virgen del Carmen
15 to 19 July. The Virgin of Carmen is the patron of fishermen, and in a town that was a fishing village within living memory this still means something. The image is carried down to the water. If you only see one religious fiesta in Benidorm, this is the one that best explains how the place got here.
San Jaime follows on the 25th, Santa Ana on the 26th.
August — Sant Roc
August is the month the town gives over to visitors, and the fiesta calendar thins accordingly. Sant Roc on the 18th and a run of verbenas through the month. If you are here in August, the better use of an evening is a free summer concert or the swim in from the island.
September — the Marathon of the Euro
5 September. Not a race, whatever the name suggests. Coins are laid end to end along a length of tape, forty-five to the metre, and the line grows all day as people passing add to it. The money funds the Festes Majors Patronals in November. It has been running since 1990.
The Fiestas del Barrio Imalsa II take the last weekend, 25 to 27 September.
October — the biggest month
October is the fullest month in the Benidorm year and the one most visitors miss entirely.
Moros y Cristianos, 1 to 4 October. Moors and Christians. The parades are the spectacle the Costa Blanca is genuinely known for, and Benidorm’s are large. Book accommodation early if you want to be in the Old Town for it. We have a full page on what happens each day and where to stand.
Festes del Roser, 7 to 11 October, overlapping with the Fira de Productes de la Terra, 9 to 11, a market of local produce run by the Festes Majors Patronals commission.
9 October, Día de la Comunitat Valenciana, and 12 October, Día de la Hispanidad. Two public holidays in four days. Expect banks and offices shut and the town busy with Spanish visitors rather than foreign ones.
Rocío Chico, 16 to 18 October. Then the Almudena runs the rest of the month: the flower offering on the 18th, the triduo from the 22nd to the 24th, and the procession on the 25th. The Dia de les Penyes falls on the 24th.
The clocks go back in the early hours of the last Sunday.
November — Festes Majors Patronals
6 to 11 November. This is the town’s own week, in honour of the Virgen del Sufragio and Sant Jaume, and everything else in the calendar has been quietly funding it since January. If you want to see Benidorm as a Spanish town rather than a resort, come in the first fortnight of November. It is also cheap, and the weather is usually better than anyone expects.
Todos los Santos on the 1st. The Festa de la Carxofa on the 14th. The Christmas square opens on the 28th.
December — and the turn of the year
The Constitution Day holiday on the 6th and the Immaculate Conception on the 8th sit together in what the Spanish call the puente, a long weekend that fills the town.
The triduo of Our Lady of Hope runs from the 10th to the 12th, with the falla exaltación evenings mid-month. Nit de Nadal on the 24th, and New Year’s Eve on the 31st, which in Benidorm means the square, the grapes at midnight and a great many people in fancy dress.
What is still to come in 2026
If you are reading this now, these are the dates left in the year:
- Fiestas del Barrio Imalsa II, 25 to 27 September
- Moros y Cristianos, 1 to 4 October
- Festes del Roser, 7 to 11 October
- Fira de Productes de la Terra, 9 to 11 October
- Día de la Comunitat Valenciana, 9 October
- Día de la Hispanidad, 12 October
- Rocío Chico, 16 to 18 October
- Ofrenda de Flores, Almudena, 18 October
- Triduo de la Almudena, 22 to 24 October
- Dia de les Penyes, 24 October
- Procesión de la Almudena, 25 October
- Todos los Santos, 1 November
- Festes Majors Patronals, 6 to 11 November
- Festa La Carxofa, 14 November
- Christmas square opens, 28 November
- Día de la Constitución, 6 December
- Inmaculada, 8 December
- Nit de Nadal, 24 December
- Fin de Año, 31 December
And into 2027: the Cabalgata de Reyes on 5 January, the Festes Majors Patronals queens crowned on the 9th and 10th, and Sant Antoni from the 15th to the 17th.
Where these dates come from
Benidorm council publishes a fiesta calendar for the whole year each January, naming the organising association for every event. That document is the authority, and it is what this page is built from. Listings sites frequently carry dates a year out of step, particularly for the movable fiestas, so where a site disagrees with the council we have gone with the council and said so.
Days can still move after publication. For anything you are travelling specifically to see, check the organising association closer to the time.
If you would rather have the lot in your phone than on a page, all of these dates are in the Benidorm fiesta calendar, which you can subscribe to in about fifteen seconds.
