Algarve winter festivals, carnival and markets — Winter 2026

The Algarve winter has its own cultural calendar, built for the people who live there rather than for visitors. In early 2026 it held Janeiras singing at the turn of the year, two carnivals on the same February days, an orange fair in Silves and an almond-blossom festival in the hills near Castro Marim. In between, the weekly markets in Olhão, Fuseta and Loulé kept their usual rhythm.

Almost everything happens on a weekend or a single afternoon, so it fits around a working week without taking days off. The weather does not always help: the wet, windy weeks lasted until the middle of February, and carnival arrived with the first dry week¹.

January: Janeiras

The Janeiras are New Year songs, sung in the street and at people’s doors in the days leading up to the Epiphany. Households used to give the singers dried fruit such as chestnuts and walnuts; today it is often sweets or a little money².

In the Algarve the custom lives on mostly in the inland villages. In the hills above Loulé, the Cortelha group goes door to door in the parish of Salir with accordion, tambourine and triangle, singing about the birth of Jesus and the arrival of the Kings³. There is a public version too: the vocational school in Alte holds a recurring meeting of young and old Janeiras singers, open to everyone⁴.

Expect small groups, acoustic instruments and songs in Portuguese, mostly in the villages around Loulé.

February: carnival week

Carnival is the big event of the winter, and the region’s two large parades gather around Carnival Tuesday.

Loulé Carnival

Loulé runs the larger parade, over three afternoons along Avenida José da Costa Mealha⁵. In 2026 the theme was super-heroes, used for political, social and sports satire, with a parade of satirical floats and tens of thousands of visitors expected⁵⁶. Entry is by a small ticket, and the money goes to the local associations and to social causes⁵.

Guests from a coliving house in Fuseta went to Loulé during carnival week, which was also the first dry week of the year in the eastern Algarve¹.

Moncarapacho Carnival

Moncarapacho, a village in the Olhão municipality, has held its Batalha das Flores for more than a century. Residents build the floats and make the paper flowers by hand, the parish organises it, entry is free, and the evenings end with carnival dances at the Casa do Povo⁷.

From Belavista Coliving & Retreat, the family house on the hill between Olhão and Fuseta⁸, this is the nearer of the two. Quarteira and Alte also run smaller parades of their own⁶.

February: citrus and almond blossom

Silves orange fair

Winter is orange season, and Silves celebrates it. The Mostra Silves Capital da Laranja fills the town’s exhibition park for a long weekend, free to enter, with citrus growers, regional products, wine, sweets and crafts, plus music, folk dance and activities for children. At the same time, restaurants in town put orange at the centre of their menus⁹.

Closer to home, guests picked oranges and avocados on the farm that Pomar Coliving runs near its apricot farm outside Olhão.

Almond blossom at Alta Mora

When the almond trees flower, the Alta Mora ridge near Castro Marim holds its Festival das Amendoeiras em Flor¹⁰. The programme has signposted walks through the blossom, folk music, a street market, a village of craftspeople, and workshops on bread, basketry and planting almond trees¹¹. Check the date before you go: in 2026 it moved by two weeks¹¹¹⁰.

Every week: the markets

The festivals are a few weekends. The markets are every week, and they show the season most clearly: oranges, almonds and fresh fish.

Olhão: two brick market halls on the waterfront, fish in one, fruit and vegetables in the other¹², with almonds, honey and dried figs on the fruit side¹³. On Saturday mornings small producers from the area set up outside with what they grew: onions, potatoes, herbs, homemade cakes and seasonal fruit¹⁴.
Fuseta: a smaller municipal market, open in the mornings, with fruit, vegetables, meat and fish from the local boats¹⁵.
Loulé: the market hall, built in the early twentieth century in an Arab-inspired revival style, is open Monday to Saturday, from early morning to mid-afternoon. On Saturday mornings a producers’ market fills the streets around it, with oranges, pomegranates, almonds, dried figs, carob and honey¹⁶.

Guests at the Fuseta house went to the Olhão Saturday market and the Fuseta market every week. One weekend in January, a flea market and a pizza street party in Tavira took over.

Rota do Petisco, the regional tapas trail, runs in autumn and falls outside the winter season¹⁷.

Checklist

Put carnival week in the calendar first, and plan the following year from the date of Carnival Tuesday.
Book afternoons, not days. The parades start in the middle of the afternoon.
Plan transport inland. Loulé, Alte and Alta Mora are easier with a car or a shared lift.
Go to a Saturday market early. Both the Olhão and Loulé producers’ markets are over by lunchtime.
Pack for rain until mid February.
Check each programme the week before. Dates can move.