Andorra's carnival, between Encamp's bear and the slopes

Anyone searching for carnival in Andorra usually pictures a fancy-dress parade, and what they find is something more interesting, a bear. The Andorran carnival has a public holiday and a tradition recognised by UNESCO, Encamp’s Ball de l’Ossa. Everything else happens in the middle of peak ski season, and that’s how to plan it. If you’re after costumes and parades, check the parish programmes nearer the time; if you want something you’ll only see here, it’s Encamp on the Monday.

Carnival Monday, a national holiday

In the 2026 working calendar Carnival Monday was one of the fourteen official holidays, on 16 February, under the Govern’s decree. It doesn’t close the shops, though, so tourist businesses can trade as normal.

For 2027 you’ll have to wait. On 29 September 2026 the Govern hadn’t approved the following year’s calendar, and the 2026 one came out in October 2025. By the calendar, with Easter on 28 March 2027, Carnival Monday falls on 8 February. I give that as a guide, not a confirmed holiday, and the full list is in Andorra public holidays.

Encamp’s bear dance

This is what I’d come for. Andorra Turisme explains that Encamp’s Ball de l’Ossa is a traditional performance held on Carnival Monday. Since the 1950s it has followed a script by Rossend Marsol, known as ‘Sícoris’, and it’s thought to date back to the Middle Ages, when it was staged at Candlemas. The bear stands for the year’s hardships, and catching it means, in the website’s own words, tackling everything the community has been through together and with good humour. The play talks openly, and very sarcastically, about the year’s events.

Since late 2022 UNESCO has listed it as intangible heritage within the ‘Bear festivities in the Pyrenees’, a joint nomination with France that also covers Arles-sur-Tech, Prats-de-Mollo and Saint-Laurent-de-Cerdans in the Haut-Vallespir. Encamp’s festivities committee looks after it with support from the Govern’s cultural heritage department. For the parish itself, see Encamp, the Funicamp parish.

And Ordino’s bear

Ordino has its own, L’última Ossa, which was also a carnival play. It used to be performed in the square outside Sant Corneli i Sant Cebrià, the village church, then moved to St Stephen’s Day and, since its strong revival in 2017, has moved to early December, staged in the Casa d’Areny-Plandolit museum gardens. So for a bear at carnival time, it’s Encamp’s.

There’s a third worth knowing about. According to the Comú de Canillo, about a hundred people watched the bear return to Sant Joan de Caselles at the end of December 2025, during the El Vilar festival, for the first time since 1942. It isn’t a carnival date either, but it shows how alive these traditions still are.

Carnival in peak ski season

Carnival always falls in winter, and in Andorra that means busy slopes, often with half term thrown in. February is the last of the three months Andorra Turisme gives for the heaviest snowfall, and Grandvalira suspends its large-group discount for the whole month, from 30 January 2027. If you’re combining the bear dance with skiing, I’d stay in Encamp, where the Funicamp takes you up to Grandvalira, and buy the lift pass online, up to 15 % cheaper. The month is covered in Andorra in February.

The winter sales, which Andorra Turisme says run from late December to early March, overlap with these dates too. Flying home, remember that UK customs allowances apply to what you bring back.

On the practical side, most British skiers fly into Barcelona or Toulouse and take the coach. If you drive, your hire car needs chains or winter tyres, a legal requirement all winter, and your travel insurance needs winter sports cover, since Andorra doesn’t take the GHIC.

One tip if you go. The play has its own language, music and dance, according to Andorra Turisme, and it’s full of local jokes, so don’t expect to follow every line; the music and the capture of the bear carry it anyway.

On the table, a Lenten stew

One dish is tied to this time of year, the conger eel or Lenten escudella. Andorra Turisme traces it to travelling fishmongers from Spain’s Atlantic coast, who right up to the middle of the last century walked these valleys around Carnival and again in spring, selling dried conger eel and salted cod. The country’s cooking is in Andorran food, and the rest of the year’s festivals in Andorra events.