Tamborrada of San Sebastián
20 January 2026 — Boom-boom-boom! A whole city drums from midnight to midnight!
The Tamborrada is a drumming festival held in San Sebastián (Donostia in Basque), in Spain's Basque Country. Every year on 20 January, the feast day of the city's patron saint, Saint Sebastian, the city drums for exactly 24 hours, from midnight to midnight. Thousands of participants, organised in companies, march through the streets dressed as cooks and as 19th-century soldiers. It begins at midnight with the raising of the flag in Constitution Square and the first beats of the drums. According to the common explanation, the custom dates back to the 19th century and grew out of a playful imitation of soldiers' drumming and the work of cooks, though accounts of its origin vary. Today there are also separate children's tamborradas, where young drummers take to the streets too. The date is fixed – 20 January, the feast of Saint Sebastian, in the depth of winter, when the nights are long.
Flying across the sky: An ethereal, bluish-silver figure made of luminous dots and fine lines, like a constellation, marching across the night sky in a tall chef's hat and beating a small drum with two sticks
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