This almost-400-year-old fair in Grândola has five nights of music from 27 August
Tony Carreira on the Friday, Bárbara Tinoco on the Saturday, Slow J on the Sunday and GNR closing on the Monday. New for 2026 is a Sunset Stage running 8pm to 9.30pm from 28 to 31 August, in the regional produce area.
Some fairs get organised. Others simply come back. Grândola’s has been coming back for the better part of four centuries, which makes it one of the oldest free fairs in Portugal, and this year it takes over the town from 27 to 31 August, with one headliner a night on the main stage.
Thursday the 27th opens with dance and afro sounds from Diego Gonzalez, Diego Miranda and Danni Gato. Friday belongs to Tony Carreira, whose songs most of the country can sing without meaning to. Saturday is Bárbara Tinoco, Sunday is Slow J, and Monday the 31st ends with GNR, a band old enough to have soundtracked several of the generations in the crowd.
The new stage, and why it is small on purpose
The 2026 addition is called the Sunset Stage. From 28 to 31 August, between 8pm and 9.30pm, a DJ set fills the gap between the end of the afternoon and the point where the fair turns nocturnal. It sits in the regional produce area, which has been rearranged around it, and the point is to have music where people are already eating and drinking rather than queuing for a headliner. The Bar Stage stays as it was, running pop, rock, funk and Portuguese music deeper into the night.
Food and wine get their own centre of gravity. The wine space occupies the central nave between the two exhibitor pavilions, run by the Costa Alentejana producers association, with tastings and bottles to take home. From Friday to Monday, at the end of the day, five chefs cook dishes built from local produce and matched to wines from the municipality.
Then there is everything that only makes sense at a fair like this one: the tasquinhas, the craft stalls, an equestrian festival, and a Ferris wheel returning to the site. Two fair trains shuttle between the ground and the town centre, joined this year by an electric tourist train, a first for the event.
If you are heading further north in September, the logic is the same and the scale is different: the Feiras Novas in Ponte de Lima turn 200 from 9 to 14 September, and before that the São Bartolomeu pilgrimage fills Ponte da Barca from 18 to 24 August.
Image: José Prego / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
