Top 10 Colombian Festivals and Carnivals to See in 2027

Colombia has more festivals than it has weekends. Almost every town runs its own, and a surprising number of them are worth flying for, which means the real problem isn’t finding one. It’s choosing.

So here are ten I think justify building a trip around, in the order they happen through 2027. I’ve given exact dates where they’re already fixed and flagged where they aren’t, because most Colombian festivals shift a little each year and the ones that don’t are the easiest to plan.

One thing before the list: August is crowded. Three of these ten land within about two weeks of each other. Depending on how much time you have, that’s either a problem or the best two weeks of your year.

Colombian festivals calendar 2027

1. Blacks and Whites’ Carnival, Pasto (January 2 to 7)

The year opens in the far south, in a city most visitors never reach. Pasto sits at 2,500 metres near the Ecuadorian border, and for six days in January it produces what I’d argue is the most technically impressive craftsmanship of any Colombian festival. The floats are built over months by families of artesanos who have been doing it for generations, and they are enormous, articulated, and genuinely astonishing up close.

The two central days come from the story the city tells about its own beginning. On January 5, the Day of the Blacks, people paint their faces black, commemorating a day of freedom granted to enslaved people under Spanish rule. On January 6, the Day of the Whites, everyone answers with talc and foam, and the Desfile Magno takes the floats through the city. Whatever the precise history, what it produces now is a place where by nightfall nobody is any particular colour.

UNESCO recognised it as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, and the workshops where the floats are built are open in the days before. That’s the part I’d make time for.

While you’re there: Laguna de la Cocha is an hour away, a high-Andean lake with a village of painted wooden houses on the shore. It is very quiet, which after six days of carnival is the point.

Image by ProColombia

2. Cartagena International Music Festival (January)

This one is the outlier on the list, and that’s why it’s here. No parades, no foam. For about a week in January, the churches, plazas, and theatres of the walled city fill with orchestras, chamber ensembles, and soloists from around the world, and Cartagena stops being a beach destination for a few days.

What makes it work is the rooms. Hearing a string quartet inside a colonial church built in the 1600s is a different experience from hearing one in a concert hall, and the festival programmes around that deliberately. If you’ve been to Cartagena before and found it too polished, this is the week to go back.

While you’re there: Before an evening concert, spend the afternoon in Getsemaní. It’s the neighbourhood just outside the walls, and it has the street art, the plazas where people actually sit, and the better bars. Our rum and chocolate tasting runs there.

3. Barranquilla Carnival (February 6 to 9, 2027)

The biggest one, and the one that takes the most planning. Four days: Batalla de Flores on Saturday, Gran Parada de Tradición on Sunday, Gran Parada de Fantasía on Monday, and the Muerte de Joselito on Tuesday. Around 80,000 hacedores take part every year across some 845 folkloric groups, which is the number that best explains what this actually is. Barranquilla organises its whole year around it.

The mistake most visitors make is treating Saturday as the only day worth going to. It’s the biggest, it’s also the hottest and the most crowded. Sunday, with the folkloric groups and no floats, is closer to what Carnival is.

Palco seats and hotel rooms both sell out months ahead, so this is the one on the list where booking late genuinely costs you.

We wrote a full guide to it: Barranquilla Carnival 2027, dates, parades and how to plan your trip. Or see our Carnival experience.

While you’re there: The Museo del Caribe gives you the context for what you’ll see in the street, and it’s worth doing before the parades rather than after.

4. Bambuco Festival, Neiva (late June)

Colombia’s Caribbean gets most of the attention, so the Andean interior tends to get skipped. This is the correction. In Huila, the Festival Folclórico y Reinado Nacional del Bambuco centres on the Sanjuanero Huilense, a courtship dance with choreography so specific that competitors train for it the way athletes train.

It runs alongside the San Juan and San Pedro celebrations at the end of June, which means the whole department is in a good mood for about two weeks. The food is a large part of it, particularly asado huilense, pork slow-roasted in a way that people from Huila will tell you at length is not done correctly anywhere else.

While you’re there: The Tatacoa Desert is a couple of hours from Neiva. Ochre canyons, almost no light pollution, and an observatory. Go for the night sky rather than the landscape.

Image by Calendario Colombia

5. Fiestas del Mar, Santa Marta (late July)

Santa Marta is the oldest surviving city in Colombia, founded in 1525, and it marks its anniversary at the end of July with a festival built around the sea. Water sports, concerts, parades, the crowning of the Reina Nacional del Mar.

I’ll be straight about this one: it’s the least internationally known festival on the list, and it isn’t the reason to go to Santa Marta. But if you’re already heading to the coast in July, it turns an ordinary beach week into something with a bit more going on, and the city is at its most alive.

While you’re there: Tayrona National Park is under an hour away. Beaches against jungle, and the archaeological sites of the Tayrona people further up. Check the park’s closure periods before you plan, because it shuts several times a year at the request of the Indigenous communities who own the land.

6. Feria de las Flores, Medellín (early August)

Ten days, and the one moment that matters is the Desfile de Silleteros. Farmers from Santa Elena, the mountain corregimiento above the city, carry flower arrangements on wooden frames strapped to their backs. Some of the silletas weigh over 70 kilos. The families have been doing this for generations and the right to carry is passed down.

What I’d say about this one is that it’s easy to see it as a flower parade and miss what’s happening. The silleteros are farmers, not performers. The frames come from a time when they carried produce down the mountain to sell, and before that, people. Knowing that changes what you’re watching.

You can see our Flower Festival experience here.

While you’re there: Comuna 13, ideally with someone from the neighbourhood rather than from a tour company. Our private Comuna 13 experience is led by people who grew up there.

7. Festival Nacional de la Cumbia, El Banco (mid-August)

This is the one on the list I’d push hardest, and the one almost nobody outside Colombia goes to.

El Banco is a small river town in Magdalena, and most historians place the origin of cumbia here. The festival was founded in 1970 by the composer José Barros, whose songs a good portion of the continent knows without knowing they’re his. It runs four days in mid-August, and the main stage is built on the water, on the Magdalena itself.

Cumbia is not a Colombian rhythm that happens to have travelled. It’s the rhythm that turned into a shared musical identity across Latin America, from Mexico to Argentina, changing shape in every country it landed in. Standing on the riverbank in El Banco where it started, watching candlelit cumbiambas, is a very different experience from hearing it in a club in Bogotá.

The trade-off is access. El Banco is remote, transfers are complicated, and accommodation is limited, so this is the one where going with someone who has the contacts genuinely changes whether the trip works. Ask us about connecting with the changemakers keeping the José Barros tradition going.

See our Cumbia Festival experience.

8. Petronio Álvarez Festival, Cali (mid-August)

The largest Afro-cultural festival in Latin America, and the reason to go to Cali if salsa isn’t your thing.

For a week in August, Cali becomes the capital of the Colombian Pacific. The music is currulao, bunde and juga, built around the marimba de chonta, an instrument UNESCO recognised in its own right. The Pacific coast is one of the most culturally distinct regions in the country and one of the hardest to reach, so Petronio is where it comes to you.

The food and drink section is not a sideshow. Pacific cuisine works with ingredients you won’t find elsewhere in Colombia, and viche, the distilled sugarcane spirit that was criminalised for decades and is now protected as ancestral heritage, is worth understanding before you drink it.

More on our Petronio Álvarez page.

While you’re there: Cali is the salsa capital, so take a class and then go out. You will be the worst dancer in the room and nobody will care.

9. Festival of Lights, Villa de Leyva (around December 7)

December 7 is the Día de las Velitas, the night Colombians light candles on doorsteps and windowsills to open the Christmas season. It happens across the whole country, and it’s my favourite night of the Colombian year.

Villa de Leyva does something else with it. The town has one of the largest cobblestone plazas in South America, and for the Festival de Luces the best pyrotechnic companies in the country compete over it. Colonial white walls, a plaza the size of several football pitches, and fireworks. It works better than it has any right to.

Villa de Leyva is three or four hours from Bogotá, which makes this the most accessible festival on the list if you’re already in the capital.

While you’re there: Casa Terracota, a house built entirely from fired clay, and the paleontology museums. The area was seabed 120 million years ago and the fossils are still coming out of the ground.

Image by Sala de prensa, Gobierno de Colombia

10. Cali Fair (December 25 to 30)

The year closes in Cali. Six days between Christmas and New Year, built entirely around salsa: the Salsódromo parade, concerts, orchestras, and dance competitions at a level that will reset your idea of what the word “dancing” means.

Worth knowing that Cali’s salsa is its own school. It’s faster than Cuban or New York salsa, with footwork that developed locally in the 1970s, and the dancers here compete internationally. You don’t have to dance to enjoy it, but you should watch people who can.

Because it falls in the Christmas week, this is the one to book earliest. Colombians travel for it.

Image by Feria de Cali

How to actually plan around one of these

Three things worth knowing before you pick.

Book earlier than feels necessary. Festival weeks are the only times these cities run out of rooms, and prices climb steeply. Six months out is normal for Barranquilla, Cali at Christmas, and Pasto in January.

Don’t build the whole trip around the festival. Four days of parades is a lot. The festivals that work best sit inside a longer trip, with somewhere quieter on either side. Barranquilla pairs with Cartagena and Santa Marta, Pasto with the Nariño highlands, Medellín with the coffee region.

The smaller ones need more help, not less. El Banco and Neiva have limited infrastructure and no obvious way in from outside. That’s exactly why they’re still worth going to, and exactly why arranging them alone is difficult.

Frequently asked questions

What is the biggest festival in Colombia?
Barranquilla Carnival, held over the four days before Ash Wednesday. In 2027 that’s February 6 to 9. It’s the second-largest carnival in the world after Rio’s.

When is the Blacks and Whites’ Carnival in 2027?
January 2 to 7, 2027, in Pasto. The two central days are January 5 and January 6.

Which month has the most festivals in Colombia?
August. The Feria de las Flores in Medellín, the Festival Nacional de la Cumbia in El Banco, and the Petronio Álvarez Festival in Cali all fall within a couple of weeks of each other.

Which Colombian festival is best for a first visit?
Barranquilla Carnival if you want the biggest and most famous, and it combines easily with Cartagena and Santa Marta. Feria de las Flores if you’d rather be in Medellín, which is an easier city to land in.

Do I need tickets for Colombian festivals?
Most parades are free to watch from the street. Reserved grandstand seating, which is worth it for the long parade days, is ticketed and sells out. Concerts and the Cartagena music festival are ticketed separately.

How far in advance should I book?
Six months for the big ones. Hotel inventory in these cities is finite and festival weeks are when it runs out.

Planning a trip around one of these?

We build itineraries around all ten, including the ones that are difficult to reach on your own. Tell us which festival caught your eye and roughly when you can travel, and we’ll take it from there.