06 Jul 2025 - 14 Jul 2025

San Fermín bull-running festival

Name: San Fermín bull-running festival
Start: 2025-07-06T13:33
End: 2025-07-14T13:33
Location: San Fermín bull-running festival

Festivity of International Tourist Interest

Pamplona

Navarra

Pamplona

Pamplona becomes a continuous celebration during the city's most emblematic festival. This event, which attracts visitors from all over the world, is best known for its bull runs, but San Fermín is much more than that.

Thousands of people go to Pamplona every year to experience the risk and the thrill of the running of the bulls, a tradition immortalised by Ernest Hemingway in his novel Fiesta. Over nine days, dressed in traditional white costumes with a red kerchief, locals and visitors give themselves over to the festive spirit. The band La Pamplonesa fills the streets with music, the Comparsa de Gigantes y Cabezudos (a traditional parade featuring large, oversized figures and people with giant heads) marches alongside bagpipers and txistularis, and the local clubs bring a mischievous spirit to the celebration.

San Fermín starts at 6 am on 6 July. This is when the inaugural rocket is launched from the balcony of the Town Hall, marking the official start of the fiesta, and the crowd gathered in the square goes wild. The first running of the bulls takes place the next day: at 8.00 am the doors to the Santo Domingo corral are opened and hundreds of people run ahead of the bulls on a route around the old town to the bullring. Every day from 7 to 14 July, this brief, intense race is repeated, taking just three minutes to run the 848-metre route.One of the most emotive moments occurs a few minutes before the running of the bulls starts, when the runners ask San Fermín to protect them, singing three times to of a small image located on Cuesta de Santo Domingo. Those who want to watch the running of the bulls can do so from the barricades, from a balcony rented by a tourism company or by going directly to the bullring to witness the final stretch.Other events include outdoor dances, concerts, dance performances and bullfights, which are very lively thanks to the peñas or clubs cheering them on. San Fermín ends on 14 July at midnight, when the people gather in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento with lit candles, singing “Pobre de mí” (poor me), saying goodbye to their fiesta until the following year.