What this actually is
Carnival in Madeira is not the three days it is elsewhere. The regional calendar opens a window of roughly two weeks in downtown Funchal, and inside it sit the events people actually travel for: a Solidarity and Children’s Carnival, the Allegoric Parade over one or two evenings, and on Carnival Tuesday the satirical Slapstick Parade. The parade evenings close the centre of Funchal to traffic.
Announced dates
One block per announced year. The window is the whole festival; the lines under it are the individual events the calendar names.
2027
Festival window: –
Published programme
2028
Festival window: –
Published programme
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 festivities as running for two weeks rather than the traditional three days, which is why the window in the table is so much wider than the parades inside it.
The Allegoric Parade is given as around 1,500 costumed participants and more than a dozen floats.
It is described as an itinerant festival: the programme spreads beyond Funchal into other municipalities, so the Funchal window is not the whole of it.
The Festa dos Compadres in Santana, which opens the Carnival season, is described as a tradition of more than fifty years.
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.