Festivals & Celebrations

A festival ties your trip to specific days. You have already chosen the city and the event, and now you need to work out when to arrive, where to watch from, whether you need a ticket and what will be closed on those days. Being off by a single day can take the point out of the whole trip. These are the questions people bring to this section.

Most of the articles cover winter celebrations. We go through the Christmas markets of Dresden, Munich, Vienna, Nuremberg and Riga, Advent in Zagreb and the lights of Ljubljana: locations, dates, opening hours, food and souvenirs. Separate pieces are devoted to New Year's Eve: the fireworks in Funchal on Madeira, Puerta del Sol in Madrid, the fireworks in Budapest, St. Barts. There are also articles on traditions, for example Sinterklaas in the Netherlands and Christmas in England.

The second big topic is carnivals and street festivals. The section covers Venice, Viareggio, Nice, Tenerife, Cádiz, Binche and Fasnacht in Basel, with parade dates, tickets and viewing spots. Alongside them are Spanish and Italian events: Semana Santa in Andalusia, the Feria de Abril in Seville, the Palio di Siena, Verona in Love. Autumn is represented by beer festivals (Oktoberfest, a comparison of Wasen and Wiesn) and by Halloween in Ireland and elsewhere in Europe. Beyond Europe, we write about Día de los Muertos in Mexico, Loy Krathong and Yi Peng, the Full Moon Party on Ko Pha-ngan, matsuri in Japan and the summer festivals of Lebanon.

Besides breakdowns of individual events, the section includes roundups and seasonal overviews. These are destinations for New Year, ideas for March, Paris in November, Istanbul in December, Portugal in winter, tulips in the Netherlands. They help when your vacation dates are already fixed but you have not yet picked an event. In these pieces the festival is one of the reasons to go, alongside weather and prices.

Every article opens with a short answer: when the event takes place, where it takes place and whether you need a ticket. Practical sections follow: the program day by day, venues, prices, transport, what to bring. Every figure has its source stated, and each article carries the date it was checked. We verify dates and prices against the official websites of organizers and cities. If the official program has not been published yet, we say so. We are direct about the downsides: crowds, lines, high accommodation prices, closed streets, closed museums.

The section suits those who travel for the event itself or want to combine it with seeing the city. It is also useful for those who want to avoid the festive days and are looking for quiet dates. If you need a general city guide, a selection of hotels or a transport map, look for them in the destination sections. Here we write only about what relates to the festival.

Start with the article on your event and check the dates in it for the year you need. Then read the part on tickets and viewing spots: for some events tickets have to be bought in advance. After that, look at the section on transport and street closures. If you have not chosen an event yet, start with the roundups by month and destination.

This section belongs to "When to Travel". Winter celebrations are gathered in the subsection "Christmas & New Year", the carnival season in the subsection "Carnival". Weather, seasonal prices and how busy destinations get, with no link to a particular event, are covered in the neighboring sections "Spring", "Summer", "Autumn" and "Winter". It makes sense to read them together: the festival sets the dates, the season explains the conditions.

Festival dates change every year, programs are published late, and sometimes events are rescheduled. That is why we update the articles for each season and check them again against official sources. The year in the headline shows which season the text refers to. Before buying tickets and setting off, still check the dates on the organizer's website: the organizer always has the final word. Then all that is left to decide on the spot is where to stand and what to try.