Festivals

A statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary is enshrined in Pakil in Laguna and every year between the Friday before Palm Sunday and Pentecost Sunday, the women of Pakil carry the image into the city and commemorate the ‘Seven Sorrows of Our Lady’ by performing seven ‘Turumbas,’ which are wild dances performed in homage to her.

This popular week-long festival is a celebration of the culture, heritage and nature of the city of Davao. The people give thanks for their lives and the blessings of the city with joyful parades of floats decorated with flowers. They dress in authentic ethnic costumes, play traditional instruments and hold street dancing competitions.

To celebrate the start of the Christmas period, thousands of visitors flock to San Fernando to see this spectacular festival. Each barrio spends a year designing and making enormous colorful plastic lanterns arranged in beautiful, intricate patterns and lit with high-tech, computerized lights, competing for the top spot in the lights competition.

This month-long tribute to Baguio’s status as the summer capital of the Philippines celebrates the city’s beautiful flowers. It was established in 1990 to help the residents recover from the Luzon earthquake. There are colorful floats and dancers decorated with flowers that parade through the streets in a city-wide carnival.

This week-long celebration is one of the few ethnic cultural festivals in the country. Held in Malaybalay, it commemorates the anniversary of the establishment of Bukidnon as a province and honors the culture of the tribal groups in the region. Traditional tribal costumes are worn and the people perform their native dances in the streets.

This seven-day festival is held to honor the baby Jesus in Kalibo, Alkan. Catholics attend mass and religious processions take place in the streets accompanied by traditional music and dancing. The final day, the third Sunday in January, sees a torchlit parade and a masquerade ball where the most colorful tribe wins prizes.