Festivals and Events in Panama

Every town in Panama has its patronal feast and the Azuero peninsula has more of them than anywhere else. What follows is the calendar that changes travel plans.

⚠ Carnival

Carnaval runs for the four days before Ash Wednesday, so it moves with Easter and falls in February or March. The country effectively closes: banks, offices and many restaurants shut, buses fill and prices rise.

Las Tablas on the Azuero peninsula is the famous one, and it is famous for a rivalry. The town splits into two sides, Calle Arriba and Calle Abajo, each of which builds floats, hires bands and crowns a queen, and each of which spends the year trying to outdo the other. Mornings are the culecos, where tanker trucks spray the crowd with water in the heat. Evenings are the floats and the queens in full pollera.

Book many months ahead or choose a different week deliberately. Panama City has its own celebration on the Cinta Costera, which is large and much easier to get a bed for.

The Black Christ of Portobelo

On the twenty first of October tens of thousands of pilgrims converge on Portobelo for the Nazareno, the Black Christ. Many walk the last stretch through the night, some on their knees, and many wear purple. It is one of the largest pilgrimages in the Americas and it fills a town of a few thousand people. Going as a spectator is possible and asks for real care: this is a devotion, not a spectacle. The Portobelo guide covers the church itself.

Corpus Christi at La Villa de Los Santos

Sixty days after Easter, the town of La Villa de Los Santos stages the dance of the diablicos sucios, the dirty little devils: masked dancers in horned papier mache masks and red and black striped costume, in a sequence of dances and processions that runs for days and ends with the devils defeated. The masks are made locally and each one is a piece of work in itself. It is the most visually extraordinary thing in the Panamanian calendar and it is far less visited than Carnival.

The rest of the year

• Festival de la Mejorana, late September. At Guarare, the country's largest folkloric gathering, centered on the small five string guitar the festival is named for.
• The independence holidays, November. Panama celebrates separation from Colombia on the third, flag day on the fourth, Colon day on the fifth, the first call for independence from Spain on the tenth and independence from Spain on the twenty eighth. Most of the month is a holiday somewhere and the school bands practice for weeks.
• Feria de las Flores y del Café, January. Boquete's flower and coffee fair, which is exactly what it sounds like and is very pleasant.
• Town patronal feasts, all year. Ask your accommodation what is on locally. A small town feria is usually the better experience.

Practicalities

• Book Carnival and the October pilgrimage months out, not weeks.
• Expect road closures, full buses and closed banks around any major date.
• Ask before photographing people; see the culture guide.

Sources

• UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office: Panama travel advice: the index to the entry, safety, regional and health pages this cluster draws on, and the standing guidance that no travel can be guaranteed safe. Accessed 17 September 2026.
• UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Fortifications on the Caribbean Side of Panama: Portobelo-San Lorenzo, a serial property inscribed 1980 under criteria one and four, and placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger in June 2012. Accessed 17 September 2026.