Festivals and Events in Guatemala

Every town in Guatemala has a feria titular, the festival of its patron saint, and there are more than three hundred towns. What follows is the calendar that changes travel plans rather than an inventory.

⚠ Holy Week

Semana Santa in Antigua is the largest religious event in Central America and the single biggest fact in the Guatemalan travel year. Its date moves with Easter, falling in March or April.

Through the week, confraternities carry enormous processional floats through the town over alfombras, carpets of dyed sawdust, flowers and pine needles laid overnight down the center of the street and destroyed within seconds by the procession that passes over them. Families work through the night to make something designed to last an hour. It is unlike anything else in the region.

Antigua is completely full. Accommodation books many months ahead and prices rise sharply, roads into town close, and the crowds are large. If you want it, plan the trip around it. If you do not, find out when it falls and choose a different week deliberately.

The first of November

All Saints Day is when Guatemalan families visit and repaint the graves of their dead, and two towns do something extraordinary with it. At Santiago Sacatepequez and Sumpango, giant kites, some of them many meters across and made of paper and cane by teams over weeks, are flown over the cemetery to carry messages to the dead. The ones that fail tear spectacularly. Both towns are within reach of Antigua for the day and both are crowded.

At Todos Santos Cuchumatan, high in the western mountains, the day is marked by a bareback horse race that runs all day. It is a serious local occasion with a serious amount of drinking attached and it is not a spectator event arranged for visitors; go respectfully or not at all.

This is also the one day of the year fiambre is eaten; see the food guide.

The rest of the year

• Rabin Ajau, late July. At Coban, the national Maya cultural festival, centered on an event in which young women from communities across the country present themselves in traje and speak in their own languages.
• Independence Day, the fifteenth of September. Torch relays run between towns the night before and every school in the country parades.
• Quema del Diablo, the seventh of December. Households burn rubbish and an effigy of the devil outside the front door at six in the evening, clearing the year before the Christmas season. The smoke is considerable.
• Christmas and New Year. The second busiest stretch after Holy Week, family centered and loud with fireworks.
• Town saint days, all year. Ask your accommodation what is on locally. A feria in a small town is usually the better experience.

Practicalities

• Book Holy Week and the Christmas week months out, not weeks.
• Expect road closures and full buses around any major date.
• Ask before photographing people, at a festival as anywhere else; see the culture guide.
• Fireworks here are loud, close and everywhere. If that is a problem for you or for a companion, plan around the dates above.

Sources

• UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office: Guatemala travel advice: the standing warning that the FCDO advises against all but essential travel to parts of Guatemala, and the index to the entry, safety, regional and health pages this cluster draws on. Accessed 17 September 2026.
• UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Antigua Guatemala, inscribed 1979, recording the capital of the Captaincy General of Guatemala founded in the early sixteenth century, laid out on a grid inspired by the Italian Renaissance and largely ruined by the earthquake of 1773. Accessed 17 September 2026.