Brazilian Folk Festivals

Booking a trip for the Círio, or locking in a June schedule for next year, keeps hitting the same wall: half of these festivals move because they hang off Easter, and different sites give different answers. Type a year here, anywhere from 1583 to 4099, and the list comes back with the weekday spelled out. For 2026, Carnival lands on Tuesday, 17 February.

Six lines come out, always the same six: Folia de Reis on 6 January, Carnival Tuesday at 47 days before Easter, Festa Junina anchored to Saint John's Day on 24 June, Cavalhadas and Festa do Divino at Pentecost, 49 days after Easter, Corpus Christi at 60 days after, and Círio de Nazaré on the second Sunday of October. Easter itself comes from the Gregorian computus, the same algorithm liturgical calendars use.

Read each date as the pivot of the festival, not the whole run. Folia de Reis processions go from 24 December through 6 January, the June festivals fill 12 to 29 June, and the Círio program in Belém stretches across weeks. Bumba meu Boi shows up only in the explanatory text below the calendar, not in the computed list, because it has no single national date. Confirm with the city hall before booking travel.