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Porto Santo

The Columbus Festival on Porto Santo

The announced four-day windows for the Columbus Festival in Vila Baleira, and an honest account of how much of its programme is published in advance — which is not much.

Dates on this page are the announced ones for 2026, 2027, and 2028, and every one is shown with its year. That is deliberate: the commonest error online is a day-and-month line copied forward from a previous edition.

Programme detail on this page last read July 27, 2026.

What this actually is

For four days the streets of Porto Santo are given over to a period recreation: theatrical performances, concerts and a costumed market, staged around the island’s connection to Christopher Columbus. Porto Santo has a few thousand beds and one ferry, so an event that would barely register in Funchal sells the island out.

Porto SantoCrowding: Very busy

Announced dates

One block per announced year. The window is the whole festival; the lines under it are the individual events the calendar names.

  • 2026

    Festival window:

    Published programme

    The calendar gives this year a window and no named listings. Nothing is invented to fill the gap.

    Checked July 25, 2026 · Source: Visit Madeira (opens in a new tab)

  • 2027

    Festival window:

    Published programme

    The calendar gives this year a window and no named listings. Nothing is invented to fill the gap.

    Checked July 25, 2026 · Source: Visit Madeira (opens in a new tab)

  • 2028

    Festival window:

    Published programme

    The calendar gives this year a window and no named listings. Nothing is invented to fill the gap.

    Checked July 25, 2026 · Source: Visit Madeira (opens in a new tab)

Beyond the calendar

What the dates do not tell you, from official pages rather than from us. Anything that could not be attributed was left out.

  • Visit Madeira describes the festival as recreating the atmosphere the navigator would have found on the island, with theatrical performances, concerts and a costumed period market filling the streets.

    Source: Visit Madeira (opens in a new tab)

  • No day-by-day programme is published in the regional calendar — only the four-day window. The detail appears on the regional events site closer to the time.

    Source: Visit Madeira (opens in a new tab)

Where this comes from

Dates are transcribed from the Tourist Entertainment Calendar 2026–2028, published by the Regional Directorate for Tourism on June 1, 2026.

That document prints “Calendar subject to change” at the foot of every page, so treat everything here as announced rather than fixed.

Live right now

These are live cameras, not photographs. They start on their own as you reach them.

Avenida Arriaga, the avenue the Flower Festival and Carnival parades run along.

Camera operated by Madeira-Web

The cameras are hosted on YouTube, so opening this page contacts Google. Nothing else on the page does.