San Fermin Festival 2025

6 to 14 July 2025 in Pamplona (Spain)

These festivities are traditionally regarded as the third-largest in the world by number of participants, after the Rio Carnival and Munich's Oktoberfest. An estimated 3 million people fill the streets of the city over nine days.

These colourful festivities literally transform the face of the Navarrese capital, which becomes the stage for a popular spectacle blending the secular with the sacred. For the occasion, locals wear white outfits set off with a red scarf and belt.

As soon as the "chupinazo" (a rocket firework) bursts in the sky, the city explodes. For several days running, brotherhood, revelry, music and dancing take over the streets to the rhythm of brass bands and peñas. The Encierro, or bull run, is the one moment of the day when the festival holds its breath and tension fills the route, a few minutes before the bulls begin their run behind the runners. The celebration then continues with broth, or "caldico", hot chocolate and churros, giants and big-heads, the aperitif, the bullfight or fireworks that precede the nighttime revelry.

An annual festival since 1591, the long week of festivities honours Saint Firmin, patron saint of Navarre. In the 3rd century, when Pamplona was part of the Roman Empire, Saint Firmin was converted to Christianity by a French bishop: Saint Saturninus, who came to Pamplona to preach the gospel. Saint Firmin then travelled to France to study and himself become a bishop.

He then followed in Saint Saturninus's footsteps but ran into opposition from the French to his actions. Refusing to abandon his cause, Saint Firmin was beheaded and buried. However, part of his remains found their way back to his hometown of Pamplona, making him popular there. So popular, in fact, that locals soon decided to hold a festival in his honour. But exactly how this celebration turned into a full week of festivities and bullfights as we know it today remains something of a mystery...

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