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.
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.
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.
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.
