5 Best Festivals In Brazil You Should Know

Brazilians love to throw parties as can be seen with their world-famous annual carnival, where everyone from children to retirees jump into the celebrations with full enthusiasm and party spirit. There are also several other fun festivals throughout the year throughout Brazil that each have their own special customs. We found the top festivals you should visit during your trip to Brazil.

Festa Junina

Festa Junina is celebrated throughout Brazil during the entire month of June as a celebration of Saint John the Baptist, which gives it its other name Festa de Sao João. It celebrates rural life with typical clothing, food and dancing inside a village: large tents made from raw materials. In big cities, villages are usually buildings with decorations such as colored flags, checkered tablecloths and balloons. The most common clothing is a plaid shirt and straw hat with polka dots painted on the face, mostly on children. The dancing is like a square dance and the food is one of the best parts of the party; canjica, corn, pé-de-moleque and cakes are common with drinks including cachaça and wine.

Parintins Folklore Festival

The annual festival held in Parintins in Amazonas, a state in the north of the country, is the second largest in Brazil after the carnival. It takes place over three days at the end of June and celebrates the Amazonian legend of a resurrected cow. The main attraction of the festival is the competition between two teams of Garantido and Caprichoso who compete to retell the story of the ox through an exciting mix of dancing and singing, as well as a lively parade. This festival is mostly dedicated to Amazonas folklore and indigenous culture, which is why it is concentrated in just one place. It is also known as Festival do Boi Bumba or as Bumba Meu Boi.

Oktoberfest

The German roots of southern Brazil brought this traditional German festival to Brazil, where it has become one of the most popular beer festivals in the country. Held in mid-October every year in Blumenau in the state of Santa Catarina, this restaurant celebrates German cuisine and lots of beer. There are also traditional folk costumes that most people wear with great enthusiasm and lots of dancing, dancing and street parties. One highlight is the beauty pageant that searches for the Oktoberfest Queen as well as the runner-up who is crowned the Oktoberfest Princess.

Carnival

Undoubtedly Brazil’s biggest festival, carnival is known worldwide for its one week of non-stop partying. The weeks leading up to the official carnival are peppered with random street parades and parties known as blocos, and if that’s not enough, the weeks after tend to have some post-carnival parties to ease the end of the carnival blues. The blocos each have their own theme and music with the two most popular in Rio de Janeiro being ‘Cordão do Bolo Preto’ and ‘Sargento Pimenta’, the latter having a Beatles theme. The official carnival has large samba parades with flamboyant costumes and short-necked speed dancing with major cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, and Recife having the biggest parades and parties.

Festival de Cachaça

Held in the colonial city of Paraty, just south of Rio de Janeiro, is the annual Festival de Cachaça (sometimes known as Festival de Pinga) dedicated to cachaça, the national liquor made from sugar cane. While cheap versions of cachaça can practically strip the paint off the walls, carefully distilled cachaça can actually be very good and this festival gives you the opportunity to try it. Held over a long weekend in August, there are samba, forró and reggae performances, food trucks, usually handicrafts from Paraty and of course, various cachaca samples. This is also a great opportunity to get to know the beautiful city of Paraty; it may be crowded during festivals but that only adds to the fun and friendly spirit of the place and Visit the apopkarotaryfair.org.