Carnaval 2025

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Carnaval fills the city with color with a program featuring omelette competitions, concerts, parades, mask workshops and more. Carnaval is one of the most popular festivals of the year. In Barcelona, it's the festival that gets the most people involved, so for one week every year, the city is transformed with afternoon snacks of botifarra d'ou (egg sausage), masked dances, parades and sardine funerals.

And there is no Carnaval without its king, and King Carnestoltes will reach the city center punctually on Fat Thursday, to proclaim his reign of revelry.

The city's festival has changed dramatically since the first documented reference to the Carnaval, a 1333 regulation from the Consell de Cent government prohibiting any throwing of oranges and regulating the use of masks. Nowadays, the desire to have a good time and make merry is just as strong as it was then. Twenty-first century Barcelona Carnaval is all about taking part, and also implies a degree of transgression, a spontaneous exercising of individual and collective freedom.

Barcelona's Carnaval traditions range from its unique gastronomy, with egg and pork sausages, pork crackling cakes and omelettes, to a collection of sayings rich in popular expressions where Carnaval is the protagonist. It is also a festivity shared around the world, which each culture adapts in its own way through a multitude of artistic expressions and typically popular traits.

For more about how and Carnaval is celebrated in Catalunya and our top pick on where to go for a truly immersive cultural experience, check out our article Carnaval Time.

2025 Festival Highlights

February 27th,  L‘Arribo

This year the carnaval king makes his triumphant entrance in the Sants neighborhood! The party starts at 17:15 at Plaça Bonet i Muixí with the arrival of Queen Belluga, then at 18:30 she will parade through the streets of Sants with her entourage. The itinerary includes Creu Coberta, Cotxeres de Sants, Passeig de Sant Antoni to Plaça de Joan Peiró, returning to the Sants District Headquarters where the carnaval king will declare the seven days of partying, fun and excess.

The evening concludes with the taronjada, in which orange confetti explodes in the sky, evoking the 1333 prohibition by the Consell de Cent of throwing oranges during the festival. It is also a day marked by gastronomy, with egg sausage as the main specialty. In the municipal markets the day is celebrated with contests, tastings and costumed vendors.

February 28th-March 4th, Carnaval Parades

Carnaval brings dozens of parades to Barcelona's neighborhoods—around forty parades are organized throughout the city. Most parades will be held on Saturday, March 1st, but there are parades days before and even a week later. 

March 5th, Burial of the Sardine

Ash Wednesday brings an end to a week of debauchery and revelry, their Majesties the King and Queen of Carnaval have died! Funeral processions will wind through the streets of many of the city's neighborhoods in mock mourning of the death of their beloved leaders. Each neighborhood celebrates in its own way, many featuring children's activities and workshops alongside bonfires, the sardine burial ceremony and communal meals in which it is traditional to eat lots of sardines!

For details on what's happening in each neighborhood, check out the guia.barcelona.cat website.

For more events check our online events calendar.