6 of Mexico's best festivals

National Geographic

13-03-2025

This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
Day of the Dead may be Mexico's most famous festival, but it's just one of 5,000 that take place in the country each year. These celebrations blend the culture of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica with rituals brought by their Catholic colonisers: some are devoted to God, others to the devil; some celebrate life, others death. Processions form to mark everything from saints to particular professions, and no event is too small — even a girl's quinceañera, or 15th birthday party, might turn a town on its head. Here's our pick of the festivals worth travelling for.
1. Día de los Muertos, Oaxaca de Juárez
For weeks leading up to Day of the Dead, traditionally celebrated on 1 and 2 November, the walls of Oaxaca are flushed bright orange with freshly cut marigolds — fixed to doors, hung in garlands or, in some cases, cloaking entire buildings. According to legend, the flowers act as guides to souls revisiting the land of the living, where they're greeted by raucous street parties, decorated ofrenda (altars), painted faces and skeletal puppet parades. Join in by adding a picture of a lost loved one to a communal ofrenda and, typically, a sweet treat or drink they can enjoy on their journey home. Half an hour south of the state capital, you'll find the candlelit cemeteries of Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán — one of several surrounding settlements that hosts its own festivities.
2. Fiesta de la Virgen de Guadalupe, Morelia
Celebrations of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico's patron saint — as she appeared to Juan Diego, the first Indigenous person of the Americas to be canonised — begin on 12 December. Across the country, crowds carry flower-wrapped representations of the Holy Virgin and worshippers don colourful headdresses to perform the Dance of the Matachines in her honour, with live music and fireworks to follow. Morelia, the capital of the central state of Michoacán, has the most fervent festivities — each year, around 150,000 pilgrims take part in a procession towards the Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, its interior gleaming with gold.
The Guelaguetza celebrations in Oaxaca include offerings to the Zapotec goddess of agriculture.
Photograph by Gabriel Perez, Getty Images
3. Guelaguetza, Oaxaca de Juárez
Guelaguetza (meaning 'offering') is a 3,000-year-old festival that traditionally honoured the Zapotec goddess of agriculture but now serves as a celebration of the state's dazzlingly diverse Indigenous culture. Oaxaca's 16 Indigenous groups are represented, with dancers, musicians and costumed carousers from each group travelling to the state capital for the last two Mondays of July. Their processions mainly take place in an open-air amphitheatre built into the Cerro del Fortín hilltop, for which tickets are required — but the festive spirit tends to spill over into city streets.
4. Fiesta Grande de Chiapa, Chiapa de Corzo
This annual festival, held in January, is inscribed on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage List and is the chief claim to fame of this Chiapas highlands town. Honouring three Catholic saints (Saint Anthony Abbot, Our Lord of Esquipulas and Saint Sebastian), it sees parachico dancers wearing painted masks spinning amid crowds donned in folkloric costumes. Participants wear designs specific to their place of origin, with men parading in neon-woven serapes (traditional shawls) and women in meticulously embroidered pluming skirts. Soundtracked by beating drums and children's chattering maracas, the procession makes its way towards the grand doors of the Cathedral of Santo Domingo de Guzmán for a dedicated mass.
Lighting a candle in honour of the Catholic Saints is a fundamental activity during festivities.
Photograph by Gabriel Perez, Getty Images
5. Carnaval, Mazatlán
This Pacific Coast city's multi-day Carnaval celebrations, held in the lead-up to Lent, has the same roots as its famous counterparts in Brazil and the Caribbean — but today, Mazatlán's iteration is mostly an excuse for a city-wide party. Neon lights shine from the sides of grand parade floats and dancers wearing bedazzled bikinis and feathered headdresses twirl to pounding tunes late into the night. The daytime procession tends to be calmer and more family-friendly, with fairground rides and the coronation of the Carnaval King and Queen.
6. Festival Internacional Cervantino, Guanajuato
Among the few festivals tagged neither to pre-Hispanic ritual nor the Catholic calendar, this celebration of Spanish-language arts takes place in the central Mexican city of Guanajuato each autumn. Named after the Spaniard Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, its packed programme of live events includes performances of traditional Mexican folkloric ballet in the central hub Plaza de la Paz, music in repurposed baroque churches and pop-up nightclubs in subterranean catacombs.
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