Traditional Maltese Feast streamers (pavaljuni) in red and gold.

Gozo, Malta Feasts 2026: Complete Guide to Village Festa Dates

By Kerry Gaffney | Last Updated 05/06/2026

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Every Gozo village throws one celebration a year that matters more than all the others, and between May and September there is one most weekends. Feasts (festi) honour each village’s patron saint with band marches, decorated streets, petards from 8am and fireworks late into the night. They are the island’s cultural calendar at full volume, and they belong first to the villagers, though visitors are warmly welcomed. This guide has every 2026 feast date, what is on today, what to expect when you get there and the traditions that make certain villages worth a detour.

Covering the bigger island too? Our Malta village feasts guide has all sixty-plus of Malta’s 2026 dates, plus the festas worth crossing the channel for.

What Feast Is On in Gozo Today?

The next village feast on Gozo is St Lawrence in San Lawrenz on 9 August 2026.

Feasts run over several days, so the band marches, petards and street decorations usually appear midweek and build towards the Sunday procession. If you can already hear the bangs, the celebrations have started. The card below counts down to the next feast day, and the full dates table further down covers every Gozo 2026 feast

Gozo Feast Dates 2026

Here is every Gozo village feast in 2026. Celebrations usually run over several days before the feast day itself. Clicking a feast name should take you to its programme, though most of these are Facebook pages, which are often the only source of information for village events, so we cannot make promises on their behalf.

For the full Malta and Gozo list straight from the source, the Archdiocese of Malta publishes the official feast calendar each year.

Village	Feast Name	Date
Marsalforn	Saint Paul	February 25
Kerċem	Gregory the Great	March 8
Għajnsielem	St. Anthony of Padua	May 24
Munxar	St. Paul Shipwreck	May 31
Għasri	Corpus Christi	June 7
Fontana	Sacred Heart of Jesus	June 14
Xewkija	St John the Baptist	June 21
Għarb	Our Lady of Ta’ Pinu	June 22
Nadur	St Peter and St Paul	June 29
Għarb	The Visitation of Our Lady	July 5
Kerċem	Our Lady of Relief	July 12
Victoria	St George	July 19
Ta’ Sannat	St Margaret	July 26
Qala	St Joseph	August 2
San Lawrenz	St Lawrence	August 9
Victoria	The Assumption of Our Lady	August 15
Żebbuġ	The Assumption of Our Lady	August 23
Għajnsielem	Our Lady of Loreto	August 30
Xlendi	Our Lady of Mount Carmel	September 6
Xagħra	The Nativity of Our Lady	September 8
Victoria	Our Lady of Graces	September 13
Xagħra	Jesus of Nazareth	September 27
Għasri	Our Lady of Patronage	October 11
Victoria	Feast of the Immaculate Conception	December 8
Qala	Feast of the Immaculate Conception	December 8
Santa Luċija	Santa Luċija	December 13

Planning a trip around a feast? Our monthly What’s On guides have everything else happening around the feast weekends, from live music to food festivals. Start with July and August.

Looking for the Malta dates? All two dozen of them, plus our guides to the individual feasts, are in the Malta festas guide.

Looking ahead to 2027? Gozo and Malta east dates for 2027 will be added as soon as they are confirmed. Sign up to our newsletter to be the first to know.

Where to Stay for a Gozo Feast

Use the map above to find and book somewhere to stay near the feast you are planning around.

Top Tip: Staying in the heart of a village puts you right in the middle of the festivities, you won’t miss a moment of the action.

But keep in mind: village feasts bring early morning church bells and late night fireworks and music. For the best of both worlds, book a place a short walk from the main square or church. You will enjoy the celebrations and still have a peaceful spot to retreat to when you are ready to unwind.

Quick Questions FAQ

The St George feast takes place on 19 July 2026 in Victoria. It’s one of the largest celebrations on the island, centred on St George’s Square in the heart of the city. The feast runs over several days, with band marches, fireworks and the grand Sunday procession drawing crowds from across Gozo and beyond.

The Xagħra feast of the Nativity of Our Lady takes place on 8 September 2026. The date also coincides with a public holiday in Malta, Victory Day, which celebrates the ending of three historical sieges; the Great Siege of Malta (1565); the Siege of Valletta by the French (1798 – 1800); and the Siege of Malta during the Second World War

Sharing the date gives this feast a unique energy with Xagħra’s large village square coming into its own for the celebrations. This feast is one of the most atmospheric on the island.

Għajnsielem celebrates twice. The feast of St Anthony of Padua takes place on 24 May 2026, kicking off Gozo’s festa season for the summer. The feast of Our Lady of Loreto follows on 30 August 2026. The Loreto feast is the larger of the two and includes a distinctive community tradition: each year a unique cloth is chosen, and villagers buy lengths of it to make into matching garments worn throughout the celebrations.

The feast of the Assumption of Our Lady takes place in Żebbuġ, Gozo, on 23 August 2026. From its hilltop square, this feast has some of the best fireworks viewing on the island, with displays visible along the coast at Marsalforn and Qbajjar below. Not to be confused with Ħaż-Żebbuġ in Malta, whose feast of St Philip falls in June.

Santa Marija, the feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, falls on 15 August 2026 and is celebrated in Victoria, centred on the Cathedral in the Cittadella. It shares its date with one of the most important public holidays in the Maltese calendar, so expect the whole island to be out. If you are visiting that week, book accommodation and the ferry crossing well ahead.

The Nadur feast of St Peter and St Paul takes place on 29 June 2026. It’s one of the most energetic celebrations on Gozo, known for powerful fireworks displays and a strong local atmosphere. If you want to experience a feast at full volume, Nadur delivers.

If you hear loud bangs during your visit to Gozo, it’s almost certainly petards: the traditional ground-level fireworks that are an essential part of every Gozitan festa. Petards are set off throughout the feast period, often early in the morning and late at night, to announce the feast and build excitement in the village. They are extremely loud but completely harmless to bystanders. If you are a light sleeper or staying near a village during festa season, earplugs are genuinely worth packing.

One thing to note: for feasts in Victoria and Kerċem, petards are sometimes set off from the top of Gelmus hill, so the sound carries well beyond the village itself.

Finally, if you’re interested in the history of petards, the Cathedral Museum in the Cittadella has a small display of them through the ages.

A Gozo festa is a village feast held in honour of a patron saint, and they are unlike anything else on the island. Each feast typically runs over several days, building toward the main feast day with brass band marches, concerts, decorated streets, daytime petards and evening fireworks, and a Sunday procession carrying the statue of the patron saint through the village. The celebrations belong first to the community: generations of Gozitans grow up knowing which weekend is theirs. Visitors are warmly welcomed and if you get the chance to experience one, we highly recommend you take it.

No. Village feasts are free, public celebrations open to everyone. You can walk through the decorated streets, watch the band marches, and stay for the fireworks without any tickets or booking. Church services and processions are also generally open to visitors, though it’s worth being respectful of the religious elements, particularly during the procession itself.

Yes. Events on Gozo are almost always family-friendly and you’ll often find stores with toys alongside the food stalls. The one thing to prepare for is noise: daytime petards are very loud, and fireworks continue well into the night. Earplugs are worth packing if you’re bringing younger children.

Daytime fireworks (petards) usually go off at 08:00 and midday, sometimes you might hear them in the late afternoon. Evening aerial fireworks usually start after sunset, so around 9pm in summer, although some start even later, and they can all run until after midnight. The Saturday evening of a feast weekend generally has the most spectacular display. If you’re not sure what to expect, arriving before sunset and staying through the evening is the best way to experience the full atmosphere.

While Victoria’s St George feast on 19 July is large, with the main celebrations centred on St George’s Square, I think that the feast of Santa Marija, 15 August, might just edge it. It coincides with the public holiday of the same name, which is one of the most important in the Maltese calendar. It also takes place in Victoria, this time focused around the Cathedral in the Cittadella and the Aurora Theatre. The Aurora is one of Gozo’s two opera houses and also the home band club for the Cathedral parish.

There is a friendly rivalry between the feasts, and their respective band clubs, with each striving to out-do the other.

Outside of the capital, Nadur’s feast of St Peter and St Paul on 29 June is known for some of the most powerful fireworks on the island. If you prefer something more distinctive, Għarb’s Visitation feast on 5 July features the Infiorata, where the street is carpeted in flower petals before the procession passes over it. Each feast has its own character, and size isn’t everything.

Bus services run between most villages but become less frequent after around 9pm, so check the Tallinja app before you go and know your last bus time. For later evenings, Bolt and eCabs are the most reliable options on Gozo. If you’re staying in Victoria or within walking distance of the feast village, that’s the simplest solution of all. You can find full details in our guide to getting around Gozo.

If you do take a car, be warned, it will most likely take you far longer to find a parking spot than it took you to drive there.

Looking ahead to 2027? Gozo feast dates for 2027 will be added here as soon as they are confirmed. Sign up to our newsletter to be the first to know.

What to Expect at a Gozo Feast

Villages have been competing over their feasts since the days of the Knights of St John, when solemn church ceremonies first spilled out into the streets, and the rivalry is entirely alive today. A typical festa is a multi-day event built around these elements:

Church Ceremonies: Masses and novenas dedicated to the patron saint.
Street Decorations: Villages are adorned with colourful banners, twinkling lights, and statues of saints.
Processions: At the heart of most feasts is the statue procession. The parish saint’s statue is brought out of its alcove and carried through the village streets to a decorative platform, where it remains for a period before being returned to the church. It sounds simple, but in practice it’s one of the most quietly moving things you can witness on Gozo.

Some villages have multiple processions within a single feast. Kerċem is a good example: the feast of Our Lady of Succour involves three. First comes the children’s procession, where the parish youth carry a smaller statue of Our Lady through the streets. Then there is the procession of the Two, which features a large statue of Our Lady alongside St Gregory, the village’s other patron saint. Finally, the main procession carries the large statue of Our Lady herself.
Band Marches: Brass bands parade through streets playing traditional Maltese music.
Fireworks: Spectacular pyrotechnic displays light up the skies both day and night.
Food Stalls: Enjoy local delicacies like mqaret (date pastries), nougat, and pastizzi.
Unique Traditions: Some villages incorporate special activities like horse racing or artistic displays.

Statue of three saints being carried at shoulder height past a church.

Festa Etiquette

A feast belongs to the village hosting it first and the visitors second, so a few small courtesies go a long way.

Dress for the church, not the fireworks. If you duck inside during Mass or before the procession starts, cover shoulders and knees. Shorts and vest tops are fine for the street, less so for the pews.

Give the statue room. When the procession comes through, step to the side and let it pass. It is not staged for photographs from the middle of the road.

Ask before photographing up close. Band members and families in traditional dress are usually happy to be in a shot from a distance, less so with a phone lens a foot from their face.

Support the stalls. Food and drink stalls at a feast are almost always run by the band club or parish rather than outside vendors, so a plate of imqaret or a beer there puts money straight back into the celebration.

Top Tip: If you are not sure whether an area is open to visitors, watching what the locals around you do is the safest guide.

Unique Village Traditions

One of the wonderful things about Gozo’s Feasts, is that some villages take their feasts to another level by incorporating distinctive customs:

Għarb’s Infiorata (Feast of the Visitation)

In Għarb, a floral carpet (Infiorata) is created using thousands of flower petals arranged into intricate designs.

On feast day, the statue of Our Lady is carried over this carpet during a solemn procession.

Xlendi’s Greasy Pole (ġostra)

The highlight of Xlendi’s feast is watching the attempts to walk along a greased pole suspended over the bay to grab a flag. Most attempts end in the water, which is rather the point.

Men and boys in swimming shorts gather on the edge of Xlendi Bay by a greasy pole that juts out over the water.

Għajnsielem’s Cloth Tradition (Our Lady of Loreto)

In a tradition dating back to the 1980s, each year a unique and distinctive cloth is selected and villages buy lengths of it to craft into matching garments.

Santa Marija Horse Races (Victoria)

Horses race up Republic Street, which used to be called Racecourse Street, in Victoria.

Tips for Enjoying Gozo’s Feasts

Plan Ahead: Check dates in advance as accommodations fill up quickly during feast weekends. You’ll usually find updates on the village church’s facebook page.
Arrive Early: Secure a good viewing spot for parades or fireworks.
Embrace Local Cuisine: Don’t miss out on traditional treats like nougat or mqaret.
Dress Comfortably: Light clothing is ideal for summer feasts; bring layers for winter events.