This island spends four days re-enacting Columbus. The 2026 programme has just landed
Porto Santo's Columbus Festival runs 17 to 20 September in Vila Baleira, from 3pm to 11pm, free to enter. Around 58 performances, three concerts, daily parades, and a landing re-enactment on the Thursday.
When we wrote about the Columbus Festival a fortnight ago, one thing was still missing: the day-by-day programme, which the organisers only publish close to the date. It is out now, and it is bigger than last year’s.
Roughly 58 performances are spread across the four days. Twenty-five of them are musical, sixteen are dance and eleven are something else entirely, from fire shows to street theatre and juggling. On top of that there are three concerts, on the 18th, 19th and 20th, and a parade through town every day. The festival runs from 17 to 20 September, 3pm to 11pm, in Vila Baleira, and it costs nothing to walk in.
Thursday is the one to plan around
The 17th closes with a re-enactment of Columbus coming ashore from the Santa Maria, staged by the theatre companies Teatro Avesso and Cenas Ilimitadas together with pupils from the island’s secondary school. That scene is what the rest hangs off. For a few hours an entire island pretends it is the fifteenth century, and the locals are in it rather than watching it.
New this year is (EU)phoria, a contemporary circus piece premiering at the festival, on stage on the 17th and 18th. And for the third year running there is the Christopher Columbus archery tournament, still the least likely and most oversubscribed thing on the bill.
Eating, buying and getting there
Six food stalls and seven craft tents. There is no ticketed enclosure and no wristband, because the town itself is the venue, so you can turn up, wander, eat something and leave without watching a clock.
The regional government is putting close to 250,000 euros into this edition. For an island of a little over five thousand people that is a serious figure, and it explains the size of the line-up.
Logistics remain the only real argument against going. Porto Santo is a short flight from Funchal, or a ferry crossing of just over two hours from the same harbour. September makes the trip worth it anyway: the sea is still warm and the nine kilometres of sand have lost the August crush.
If you are staying on the mainland, the same weekend is busy — Estoril Classics marks its tenth edition from 18 to 20 September, on exactly those days.
Image: Meet Porto Santo / Porto Santo Council
