Festivals and events in Tenerife: what is celebrated in each season
There is one idea that keeps coming back in the guidebooks: that Tenerife is a beach island. It is. But if you ask someone who lives here which is the best time of year, they will not talk to you about the weather. They will name a month, and that month almost always has a fiesta inside it.
This guide is a map of the calendar: what is celebrated, when, and above all what the difference is between a romería and a baile de magos, because they are different things and almost nobody explains it.
The calendar is not flat: it has two peaks
Worth knowing before you plan the trip. Something is celebrated in Tenerife almost every week, but the intensity is not spread evenly:
February and March: carnival takes over everything.
August: the month of patron saint fiestas and romerías. By some distance the densest of the year.
The rest of the year there is constant activity, but on another scale: concerts, street markets, neighbourhood fiestas, local religious celebrations.
Winter: carnival
The Carnival of Santa Cruz de Tenerife is the largest event on the island and one of the biggest in the world. It falls between February and March (the date moves with Lent), and it is not a single night: it is weeks of programme, with the opening parade taking the street first and parallel events throughout the cycle, including the inclusive carnival.
What surprises first-time visitors: the street carnival is nothing like the stage one. The galas are watched on television, but what fills the city is people in costume walking the streets until dawn.
One practical detail. If you go to Santa Cruz for carnival, accommodation sells out months ahead and traffic is closed off. Many visitors stay in the north or the south and come up on extra buses.
Did you know? Carnival is not only Santa Cruz. Puerto de la Cruz and Icod de los Vinos have their own, each with its own character, and many villages hold neighbourhood carnivals on different dates so as not to clash.
Spring: the quietest stretch
This is the season with the fewest large fiestas, and for that very reason the best one if you want the island without the crowds.
Semana Santa is celebrated, with particularly careful processions in La Laguna, along with the Cruces de Mayo and Corpus Christi, whose best known expression is the carpets of flowers and volcanic sand in La Orotava. These are movable feasts tied to the liturgical calendar, so it is worth checking the specific year.
Summer: August is the month
Here is the real peak of the calendar. Between late July and early September almost every municipality holds its patron saint fiestas, and many of them overlap.
On 14 and 15 August, Candelaria draws the biggest crowds: the Virgen de Candelaria is the patron saint of the Canaries, and thousands of pilgrims arrive on foot from other municipalities. The event that resembles nothing else is the Guanche ceremony and the rite of the finding of the Virgin, performed on the beach with costume, fire and hundreds of participants. Around it there are further events, such as the athletic floral offering. If you wonder where that Guanche world being re-enacted comes from, we tell it in the nine territories Tenerife was divided into before the conquest.
That same month the villages of the north and the south fill up:
Fiestas del Santísimo Cristo del Lomo Colorado (Tacoronte), from 6 to 10 August
Noche en Blanco de Los Silos, with the shops open and the street turned into a stage
XX Traditional Harvest Gathering «Diego Pérez» and Cereal Route in Icod el Alto, where the crop is cut by hand with sickles the way it used to be
Fiestas del Coromoto in La Laguna, a full week of neighbourhood programme
And the romerías of San Roque, held for the same saint in different municipalities: Garachico, La Laguna and Vilaflor.
Autumn and early winter
September brings the Fiestas del Cristo de La Laguna, among the most important in the Tenerife calendar, with a fair, concerts and fireworks.
November brings San Andrés, which in the north has two very different customs: the opening of the new wine in the bodegas of Icod and La Guancha, and children riding down the steep streets on wooden boards. And at the end of October come the Finaos: the Canarian version of the night of the dead, with chestnuts, anise and songs, older than the imported Halloween.
Romería, baile de magos, verbena: they are not the same thing
This is the part almost no guide explains, and the one that will serve you best if you are invited to something.
A romería is a festive procession. A religious image goes out accompanied by decorated ox carts, livestock, folk groups and hundreds of people dressed as magos. People walk, they sing, and along the route food and wine are handed to anyone passing. It happens in daylight, lasts hours and is deeply local: most of those taking part know each other. Our agenda has romerías in Arafo, Charco del Pino, Chiguergue and the boat romería of Abades, which uses boats instead of carts.
The baile de magos is the party afterwards, or on the eve: folk music, parrandas, Canarian food and dancing until late, in traditional dress. «Mago» here does not mean magician: it is the Canarian countryman, and the costume is his. There are bailes de magos in Buenavista del Norte, Garachico, La Guancha, Vilaflor, Chiguergue and Fasnia.
The verbena is the simplest of the three: an open air dance with a band, usually at night and in the village square. No costume, no procession. It is the usual closing act of almost any patron saint fiesta.
And there is a fourth thing that is not a fiesta but feels like one: the luchada, a bout of lucha canaria, the traditional wrestling of the islands, fought in sand rings and part of the programme of many August fiestas.
If you are invited, go. None of these celebrations is staged for tourists. That is exactly what makes them worth seeing, and also what asks a little respect of you: ask before photographing close up, and if you are offered food or wine at a romería, take it. It is the gesture, not the formality.
And what should I wear? The question is reasonable, because in the photographs everyone is dressed the same. The short answer: nobody is required to wear the costume. At a romería or a baile de magos you will see people in ordinary clothes with no problem at all, and nobody will look at you badly for wearing jeans. That said, most locals do go dressed as magos, and if you feel like matching the mood, a plain shirt, a scarf at the neck and no beachwear is already perfectly fine. What does jar is swimming trunks and flip flops: not because of any rule, but because this is a village fiesta, not a beach bar.
How to find out what is on this week
The calendar changes every year, and many dates are movable. That is why we keep the events agenda up to date, with celebrations from every island, and a Tenerife specific view if this is the only one you care about.
One last piece of advice, of the kind you only learn by being here: fiestas are announced late. Many town halls publish the detailed programme one or two weeks beforehand, and the times change. If you are travelling for a particular fiesta, check the programme a few days before, not months.
Tenerife has beach all year round. The fiestas, on the other hand, have dates. And if you line your trip up with one, you will see an island that appears on no postcard: the one that organises itself, dresses up, cooks for the neighbour and dances in the square until the sun comes up.
Cover photo: Koppchen, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
