When is the Festa Major de Sants 2026?

The Festa Major de Sants 2026 runs from Saturday 22 August to Sunday 30 August 2026, according to council open data (Dates de festa major, 22 to 30 August) + betevé. Confirmed fixtures so far: The decorated streets, Throughout, from 22 August; Chess open, 21 to 30 August.

Is the Festa Major de Sants free?

Yes. The decorated streets, concerts, parades and children's activities are all free to attend. You pay only for food and drink, generally at bars run by the street commissions, whose takings fund the following year's decorations. A small number of items inside the festa, such as the international chess open, are ticketed or need signing up for.

Which streets are decorated for the Festa Major de Sants 2026?

Eleven streets and squares are decorated for 2026: Alcolea de Dalt, Alcolea de Baix, Finlandia, Galileu, Guadiana, Papin, Sagunt, Valladolid, Vallespir de Dalt, Vallespir de Baix and Placa de la Farga.

How do I get to the Festa Major de Sants?

Take the metro to Placa de Sants (L1 and L5) for the top of the decorated streets, or Sants Estacio (L3 and L5), which is also the mainline railway station, making this the easiest of Barcelona's big festes to reach from outside the city. Streets close to traffic through the evening.

What is the difference between the Festa Major de Sants and the Festa Major de Gràcia?

They run back to back and share the same format of hand-decorated streets judged by a jury, but Gracia is the larger and far more visited of the two, with 23 decorated streets in 2026 against eleven in Sants. Sants is quieter, less photographed and more of a neighbourhood affair.

Festa Major de Sants 2026: dates, decorated streets and what to expect

Last updated 7 August 2026

The Festa Major de Sants 2026 runs from Saturday 22 August to Sunday 30 August. Decorated streets, free concerts, communal meals and traditional culture in the old factory town west of Plaça d'Espanya. Eleven streets and squares are competing on their decorations this year, and the actress and film-maker Leticia Dolera gives the pregó that opens it.

What it is

Sants, Barcelona — 569 Festa Major de Sants 2023 (Barcelona), carrer de Finlàndia. Enric / CC BY 4.0

Sants is the last of the big August festes, and it takes over from Gràcia the day after Gràcia finishes. That timing is not an accident: the two neighbourhoods have run consecutive festes for decades, and plenty of people simply move west and carry on.

The neighbourhood itself was an independent industrial town, annexed by Barcelona in 1897 in the same wave that took in Gràcia. It grew around textile mills and then around the railway, and it kept the institutions that came with that: workers' co-operatives, athenaeums, residents' associations, the Cotxeres de Sants civic centre in a converted tram depot. The festa is organised by those bodies and by the individual street commissions, and the patron saint is Sant Bartomeu.

If you have done Gràcia, Sants will feel familiar in structure and quite different in temperature. It is less photographed, less crowded, and more obviously a party the neighbourhood is throwing for itself. The decorations are the same discipline: a committee per street, a theme kept secret, a year of evenings spent building it out of recycled material, and a jury at the end.

The decorated streets

Eleven streets and squares are guarnits for 2026: Alcolea de Dalt, Alcolea de Baix, Finlàndia, Galileu, Guadiana, Papin, Sagunt, Valladolid, Vallespir de Dalt, Vallespir de Baix and Plaça de la Farga. Each runs its own programme underneath its own decorations, which is where most of the concerts, meals and children's activities actually happen.

Walk them in daylight to see the construction, which is the part that takes the year. Come back after dark for the version with the sound on.

Where it is

Sants is the old working town west of Plaça d'Espanya that grew up around its factories and its railway station, and it keeps a reputation for organising itself: co-operatives, athenaeums and residents' associations. The festa is run by the streets themselves, and the decorated ones compete.

Open in OpenStreetMap

Metro: Plaça de Sants (L1, L5), Sants Estació (L3, L5).

What to plan around

austinevan / CC BY 2.0

Children's correfocSat 29 Aug, 18:30The junior fire run, held earlier in the evening and pitched at families.

In 15 days. The Festa Major de Sants opens on Saturday 22 August and runs to Sunday 30 August.

The programme, day by day

Every listing below comes from the council's own event feed for the festa, 130 records in total, with titles rendered into English. Times are as published by the organisers and can move on the night.

Friday 21 August

All day

International Chess Open Sants-Ciutat de Barcelona 2026 (in Catalan)Auditori