Málaga Events Calendar 2026: Feria, Semana Santa, Lights

Dates marked holiday are non-working days on the Junta's 2026 calendar for Andalucía, with the two Málaga local holidays added from the Ayuntamiento's list. On a holiday the Junta's own venues, the Roman Theatre and the Museo de Málaga, keep Sunday hours, the municipal museums keep their normal hours, and most shops outside the sixteen authorised dates close.

The dates follow Easter. In 2026 Palm Sunday, Domingo de Ramos, fell on 29 March and Easter Sunday on 5 April. Jueves Santo and Viernes Santo, 2 and 3 April, are public holidays across Andalucía. The Agrupación's 2026 timetable puts the first procession, the Pollinica, out of its church at 09:50 on Palm Sunday, at the official tribune at 12:00, at the Cathedral at 14:00 and back home at 16:15, and the pattern holds all week: each brotherhood leaves in the afternoon or evening, passes the official tribune, enters the Cathedral and returns after dark, so the streets on the routes fill from mid-afternoon and stay slow on foot until late on the big nights. The processional routes and the times are on the Ayuntamiento's Semana Santa pages and in the Agrupación's PDF, and the centro histórico page shows the streets.

Two rules attach to the week. The Junta's 2021 declaration makes the whole municipality a zone of high tourist influx from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday inclusive, so shops of any size may open every day of it. And Jueves Santo is one of the sixteen authorised shop-opening holidays in its own right. The museums keep normal hours, which makes the mornings, before the processions form, the time to see them. The Alcazaba opens at 09:00 and is on summer hours from 1 April. For 2027, Easter Sunday falls on 28 March, so Palm Sunday is 21 March and Holy Week sits entirely in March. The Agrupación's 2027 timetable and the Junta's 2027 holiday decree were not published when this page was read.

The Feria de Málaga is the city's August fair, eight days that commemorate the entry of the Catholic Monarchs into the city on 19 August 1487, the date the Ayuntamiento names as the reason for the local holiday and that the Málaga 1487 guide tells in full. The Junta de Gobierno Local fixed the 2026 fair at 15 to 22 August inclusive. It runs in two places. By day it fills the historic centre, Calle Larios, Plaza de la Constitución and the streets around them, with casetas, music and dancing, and the Ayuntamiento states that the daytime fair ends at 18:00 every day, as in previous years. By night it moves to the Real de la Feria at the Cortijo de Torres fairground. What the night fair holds and its hours are not in the press note, and EMT's own site, which would carry the special bus services to the fairground, refused every connection on the day of reading, so the way out to Cortijo de Torres is printed here as not stated rather than guessed. The getting around page has the ordinary network.

The opening fireworks are on 15 August by the Ayuntamiento's Feria page. The time is not in the note, and a search snippet giving midnight on the night of the 14th is unverified. The 19th is a local holiday. The 15th is also the national holiday of the Assumption and one of the sixteen shop-opening dates, as is Sunday 16 August at Vialia by its own list.

The reading for a visitor

If you want the Feria, come for it: book the room the week the dates are published in March, plan the daytime fair for the centre before 18:00, and expect the Cathedral to be shut to visitors on the opening weekend. If you do not, the week is still workable, because the fortress, the Picasso Museum and the port keep their hours and the beaches are in season. The best time to visit page weighs the week against the rest of August, and the 23rd is the first quiet day.

A sunset catamaran on the 15th is the one booking on this site that puts you on the water for the fireworks, though no operator promises a view of them and this page does not either.

The Festival de Málaga is the Spanish-language film festival: the 29th edition ran 6 to 15 March 2026 and the 30th is announced for 26 February to 7 March 2027, with the MaF cultural programme filling the weeks before it. What festival is happening in Málaga in March is therefore this one, and its ticketing is on festivaldemalaga.com. La Noche en Blanco is one Saturday night in May when museums, theatres and civic buildings open free from 20:00 to 01:00. The 17th edition was Saturday 16 May 2026 with the theme 'the future is written with music', and Casa Natal Picasso and the Pompidou list it as a free-entry night. The 2027 date is not announced.

The free days are the useful part of spring. On 28 February, Día de Andalucía, the Picasso Museum, Casa Natal and the Pompidou are free all day. On 18 May, International Museum Day, those three and the Carmen Thyssen are free, and the Thyssen opens on that Monday. The museums hub sets each museum's normal free window beside these dates. The Carnival in February was not on any official page we read, and whether it is free to attend the Málaga Carnival, or when it is, is therefore not stated here. The Ayuntamiento's tourism portal, which carries it, refused every fetch.

San Juan is the night of 23 June, and the beach ordinance makes it the one night fires and moragas, the sardine barbecues, are allowed on the sand: from 10:00 on 23 June to 21:00 on 24 June, and otherwise only on the night of the Pregón de la Feria within the same window and on the day the Virgen del Carmen is processioned on the beaches concerned. The Virgen del Carmen is 16 July, the patron of fishermen, and her procession goes through the fishing barrios and onto the sand at Pedregalejo and El Palo. The 2026 programme sat on the tourism portal we could not read, so the route and the hour are not stated. The beaches guide has the ordinance's other rules.

The summer holidays are the Assumption on 15 August, which opens the Feria, and the local holiday of 19 August. The 8th of September, Nuestra Señora de la Victoria, is the second local holiday: shops over 300 square metres close, the Museo de Málaga opens with holiday hours, and the Cathedral's Sunday hours apply. From 1 June to 30 September the whole municipality is a zone of high tourist influx for shop hours, so the Sunday closures that apply the rest of the year do not. The shopping page has Muelle Uno's 10:00 to 22:00 and the outlet's seven-day week.

In 2025 the switch-on was Friday 28 November at 18:30 on Calle Larios, and the light-and-sound show, 'Natividad de luz', ran three passes a night at 18:30, 20:30 and 22:00 until 4 January 2026, with the lights on but silent on 24 and 31 December and 5 January. The communiqué gives 2.7 million LED points in the centre and 500 lit streets in the districts, and the lighting hours: 18:30 to midnight from Sunday to Wednesday, to 02:00 from Thursday to Saturday and on the eves of holidays, and to 06:00 on 24 and 31 December. The 2026 switch-on had not been announced on in Q3 2026. The Ayuntamiento usually publishes it in early or mid November, and the Calle Larios page will carry it.

What the season does to the venues is on the museum pages. On 24 and 31 December the Picasso Museum, Casa Natal, the Pompidou, the Museo Ruso and the Carmen Thyssen all close at 15:00 and the Automobile Museum at 14:30, and the Roman Theatre and the Museo de Málaga close entirely. The Picasso opens 10:00 to 15:00 on 5 January too. On 25 December and 1 January everything with a ticket desk is shut, the Caminito del Rey included, and the Picasso stays shut on 6 January. New Year's Eve itself is an outdoor night on Plaza de la Constitución and Calle Larios under the lights, which stay on until 06:00. No official programme for it was read. December carries four shop-opening Sundays, the 13th, 20th and 27th, plus Monday 7 December, and the where to stay page notes that Christmas week is the winter exception to the low season.

Andalucía's retail law allows shops to open on sixteen Sundays and holidays a year. Shops under 300 square metres that are not part of a chain or a shopping centre may open whenever they like. Town councils may swap up to two of the sixteen, and Málaga did not for 2026, so the regional list applies unchanged.

Vialia, the centre above the station, publishes its own list of opening Sundays, which adds the summer Sundays inside the tourist-zone window.

2027, as far as it is published

The Junta has already published the 2027 shop-opening dates in the Orden of 10 June 2026: 3 and 10 January, 1 and 25 March, 2 May, 4 July, 1, 8 and 16 August, 1 and 28 November, and 6, 8, 12, 19 and 26 December. The 2027 public-holiday decree usually appears in May and had not on in Q3 2026. The local holidays of 19 August and 8 September are re-approved each autumn and have been stable.

The Festival de Málaga's 30th edition is fixed at 26 February to 7 March 2027. Feria 2027 will be set by the Junta de Gobierno Local in spring, and the Christmas 2026 lights in November. The sunday and monday openings page turns this table into the weekly plan.

The how far ahead to book guide says which of these weeks need a room booked early.