Feria de las Flores 2027: Medellín's Flower Festival — Planning Guide

Short on time? The Feria de las Flores is Medellín's biggest week: roughly ten days of concerts, parades and flower culture ending with the Desfile de Silleteros, when farmers from Santa Elena carry enormous floral displays on their backs through the city. The 2027 dates have not been announced. The 2026 edition ran July 31 – August 9, 2026, and on that pattern the 2027 fair is expected around late July to early/mid-August 2027 — treat any specific 2027 dates you see online as provisional until the Alcaldía de Medellín publishes the official programme. Book refundable flights and hotels now; book parade grandstands when they go on sale.

What the festival is

Medellín calls itself the City of Eternal Spring because flowers grow in the hills around it all year. Since 1957, the city has celebrated that fact with a fair that grew from a five-day flower exhibition into a ten-day festival tied to Antioquia's independence commemorations in August.

The heart of it is not a trade show. It is the silleteros: flower farmers from Santa Elena, the rural corregimiento in the mountains east of the city, who for generations carried their flowers down to market on wooden frames — silletas — strapped to their backs. The Desfile de Silleteros turns that working tradition into art: hundreds of silletas, some weighing well over 50 kg, built overnight from tens of thousands of blooms into portraits, landscapes and messages, and carried on foot through cheering crowds.

The events that matter

Across the ten days, the programme (exact 2027 line-up awaits the official announcement) typically includes:

• Desfile de Silleteros — the climax, on the festival's final Sunday. Watch from the free crowd along the route (arrive hours early, bring water and sun protection) or from paid grandstands (palcos) when tickets are released.
• The opening concert and the week's tablados — free and ticketed concerts across the city, from trova and vallenato to international acts.
• Desfile de Autos Clásicos y Antiguos — one of Latin America's great classic-car parades.
• Cabalgata (horse parade), flower exhibitions at the Jardín Botánico and shopping centres, the orchid and flower show, and the troubadour festival that paisas take very seriously indeed.
• Santa Elena itself — in the days around the parade, silletero farms open for visits; the night before the desfile, families build the silletas and the village barely sleeps. A farm visit is the single most memorable thing most visitors do all week.

Planning a 2027 trip, honestly sequenced

Book now (refundable)

• Hotels. Feria week is peak season; occupancy and prices spike, and the best-located properties in Laureles and El Poblado sell out. Book refundable rates now and refine later. For who-suits-where, see our best Medellín neighborhoods guide.
• Flights into José María Córdova (MDE), with our airport guide for the transfer into the city.

Wait for the announcement

• Exact dates and the parade day. The Alcaldía typically confirms the programme weeks, not months, ahead. Until then, hold the late-July to mid-August window loosely, especially the final-Sunday parade.
• Grandstand tickets and official tours go on sale with the programme; anything selling "2027 silleteros tickets" today is a reseller working from a guess.

Add around the fair

• Guatapé and the pueblos are at their best in the dry, sunny stretch around August — see our day trips from Medellín guide, and go on a weekday during Feria week when the city crowds peak.
• Medellín in August is still Medellín: our safety guide applies double in festival crowds (phone discipline above all).
• Pair the trip with the city's permanent flower culture — the Jardín Botánico, the Santa Elena farms outside festival week, and the flower markets in our Sundays guide (things to do in Medellín on Sundays).

What it costs

The festival itself is largely free — the parades, most street events and the silleteros desfile cost nothing to watch from the crowd. Your money goes on:

• Grandstand seats for the desfile (prices are set with each year's programme — do not trust last year's figure recycled as this year's).
• Hotels and flights at peak-season rates — the real cost of Feria week, and the reason the refundable-early strategy matters.
• Concerts and farm visits, from free tablados to ticketed headline shows and guided Santa Elena tours.

For the month-level picture of what a Medellín stay costs outside festival pricing, see our cost of living in Medellín guide.

When we will update this guide

The moment the Alcaldía publishes the 2027 programme, this page gets: confirmed dates, the parade route and grandstand sale details, and the official concert line-up. Check back — or, if you're planning now, plan in pencil and book in refundable ink.