Six of the world's most spectacular festivals for 2019
Our experts round up the best major festivals taking place in 2019, including options in Singapore, Seville and London.
1. Chinese New Year, Singapore
The red lanterns of the lunar new year are hung up in many cities around the world for the fortnight of festivities. In 2019, the Year of the Pig, Singapore will turn up the lights in Chinatown and, for the big weekend finale, host the Chingay Parade, a procession of street floats, clowns, acrobats, jugglers and dancing dragons – said to be the biggest street performance in Asia which goes from the F1 Pit Building to NS Square, the Marina Bay floating platform.
New Year Feb 5–19; Chingay Parade Feb 15–16 (visitsingapore.com)
2. Cologne Carnival
Germany’s carnival city quaffs kölsch beer and glühwein as if it were the Last Supper and dresses up – less Rio, more ragbag – from Weiberfastnacht (Fat Thursday) through to the following Tuesday, aka Veilchendienstag, the climax of the six-day celebrations. In a parody of Judas’s fatal kiss, men get public pecks, but only after they’ve had their ties cut off. Three carnival characters, the Prince, the Peasant and the Virgin, appear in the parades and masked balls and parties fill the evenings.
Feb 28 (cologne-tourism.com)
3. Semana Santa, Seville
Seville’s legendary Easter Week is a unique melding of sombreness, strangeness and muted celebration. From Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, pasos – floats bearing large, life-size sculptural tableaux from Christ’s Passion – are solemnly lugged from churches across the city. The nazarenos (penitents), walking slowly, sport white robes and sinister conical hats. Early morning on Good Friday, the whole thing culminates as the brotherhoods (which include women) congregate at the city’s Unesco-listed cathedral.
April 14–21 (visitasevilla.es)
4. Fiesta del Gran Poder, La Paz
The “great power” that this street parade celebrates belongs to Jesus, but it is indigenous pride that gives the spectacle its vital energy. For one weekend every May or June, 30,000-plus Aymara men and women take over the streets of the Bolivian capital decked out in their finest, most flamboyant costumes – men in skirts like cake tiers, women dressed like technicolour cowgirls – to dance, blast out thumping brass music and drink chicha till the llamas come home. No expense is spared, because del gran poder is also financial, and the Lord rewards the faithful in kind.
June 15–16
5. Notting Hill Carnival
It’s not in the nature of Londoners, or Britons generally, to compare their public parades to the those of New Orleans or Salvador, but Notting Hill’s remarkable carnival, celebrating its 33rd year in 2019, is recognised by everyone as a world-class event. Over Sunday and bank holiday Monday some 50,000 performers march and dance to a soundtrack of steel bands and calypso down west London’s streets, with a million people watching and dancing alongside.
Aug 26–27 (nhcarnival.org)
6. Belem’s Cirio de Nazaré
The carnivals of Rio, Salvador and Recife are celebrated as Brazil’s most effervescent extravaganzas, and so are oversubscribed every year. Just as big but less hyped is Cirio de Nazaré in Belem, gateway to the Amazon. Two weeks of celebrations culminate on the second Sunday of October when a million-plus pilgrims turn out to follow a tiny statue of the Virgin Mary.
Oct 13 (ciriodenazare.com.br)
