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[title]Brazilian carnivals are among the planet’s greatest cultural celebrations, extravagant feasts of vibrant colour, showing off raucous local music with dazzling performances. But the country’s appetite for vast musical events goes far beyond the city carnivals of Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and São Paulo. While technically not a carnival, which takes place at a different time of year and bears different characteristics, Parintins Folklore Festival is one of Brazil’s liveliest and most extraordinary events – and it is held in the heart of the Amazon rainforest.
Taking place on an island in the middle of the Amazon river, Parintins is accessible only by plane or boat. Despite that extreme remoteness, Parintins’ festival has developed a prized reputation within Brazil for its celebration of Amazonian culture, its bold, spectacular performances and its fierce, city-splitting rivalry.
A social divide, and an intense rivalry
Parintins Festival is, at its core, a competition between two teams. Over three nights performances retell a folkloric story through song and dance called Bumba Meu Boi, a legend of a resurrected ox, and at the end a winner is declared by judges. While Brazil’s carnivals typically mark the start of Lent in the Christian calendar, Parintins Festival is grounded in the heritage, traditions and folklore of the indigenous communities of the Brazilian Amazon.
With me so far? Great. Now, take whatever you’ve envisioned and up the stakes massively. Parintins Folklore Festival isn’t just a competition between two sides, it ruptures an entire city and sees two communities face off, with teams – and their fans – preparing all year for the event. On one side you have the Garantido [transliterally ‘guaranteed’] team coloured in red and white, historically representing the masses. On the other is Caprichoso [tr. capricious], in blue and black, classically repping the upper classes.
Such is the intensity of the rivalry that neither side utters the other’s name.
Locals are typically born into their team and see it as part of their identity. Some businesses and neighbourhoods pick a side, draping themselves in red and blue, while others diplomatically ensure all branding is exactly half red, half blue – even Coca-Cola features blue ads in Caprichoso territory. Such is the intensity of the rivalry that neither side utters the other’s name.
Parintins’ two teams are known for their give-all devotion and fanatical commitment. Understandably, for many the closest comparison is a local football derby, though there are a couple of notable differences. For one, the fans are more actively involved in the event (their contributions add points to the judges’ total) and there’s no aggression or violence. Instead the rivalry expresses itself in the arena: songs grow bigger and more glamourous, floats become taller, displays more elaborate.
All of this has pushed Parintins Festival to new heights of popularity in recent years. The event has taken place annually in the city of Parintins since 1965, with 2025 marking the 58th edition (the fest was cancelled during pandemic years 2020 and 2021). Important far beyond just Amazonas state, the festival is now televised, commercialised, and dominates Brazil’s national news. Parintins’ population more than doubles during the festival, and 120,000 visitors – almost all from other parts of Brazil – flew into the city in 2025 to experience it.
So, what’s all the hype about? This year I travelled thousands of miles into the Amazon rainforest, just a couple of degrees south of the equator, to find out.
The 2025 Parintins Folklore Festival
The moment the plane screeched to a halt at Parintins from Manaus – the Amazonas state capital, around an hour’s flight upriver – anticipation shimmered in the blazing, humid sun. The pilot bade us a tactful farewell, wishing the plane a happy ‘red and blue’ day, Caprichoso and Garantido boarding welcomed us on the tarmac, the two-gate airport heaving with far more passengers than it appeared used to.
In the city centre, a whole 10 hours before the festival was scheduled to begin, prospective spectators already queued up in sweltering 30C heat for free entry to the purpose-built, 25,000-capacity Bumbodromo Arena. In previous years locals camped out days in advance, but I’m told this year the respective queues – there are separate ones for reds and blues, obviously – were only allowed on the day of the event. Parties filled the city, streets of reds and bars of blues booming out music and closing off roads.
As evening arrived, darkness fell, the surrounding Amazon river turned a silky black, and the energy ramped up a notch. Pushing through the turnstiles and climbing the concrete external ramp of the stadium, the streets were steaming, burning off the day’s sizzling heat. Enticingly, spectators already queued up for the following day’s event.
The show begins
The event itself began with the two sides squaring up, not just the dancers facing off but both crowds, too, with coordinated dance moves, flurries of waving flags and fireworks shooting up into the night. Thousands were packed into the free seats; you could smell the heat, taste the sweat, even see moisture trickling off the stands.
After a fair amount of hyping by an announcer who’d donned a top hat and wings, the reds went first, as is tradition. And it became very clear that Parintins is not really a festival, nor a concert, parade or carnival. It is theatre on a grand scale, bursting with narratives, drama and mighty spectacle.
It was welcomed as a deity, appearing at the performance’s most euphoric moments.
By far the most visually arresting element of the show were the alegorias [allegories], towering floats representing figures in Amazonian life, history and folklore. The first Garantido floats pushed out were 15-feet-tall upright jaguars with piercing red laser eyes, followed in the first staging by crocodiles, warthogs, monsters and a mighty jaguar-faced being. The tallest alegorias reached over 80 feet, nearly scraping the stadium’s lighting rigs, and they all moved – snarling, prowling, nodding, peering, snatching, grappling – with the help of animatronics and leverage.
Eventually, the reds revealed the centrepiece of the show: the ox. The Garantido beast is white with a red heart in the forehead, the dancer(s) sticking their head in the hump and bucking with maniacal rhythm. The ox worked its way not just around the arena but into the crowd, too, charging up and down the aisles – and nearly knocked me into the arena as it leapt out of the press pit and into a dance routine. It was welcomed as a deity, appearing at the performance’s most euphoric moments.
Two hours followed, with new sets of allegories, all themed around the conservation of Amazonian culture. The Garantido show followed a vaguely chronological order through the history of the Amazon, from the animals through to the indigenous peoples to the modern day.
Old and new
Quaint, rustic folk festival, Parintins certainly isn’t. The music – which has its own name, ‘toada de boi’ – boomed from a weighty, high-spec soundsystem. Both Garantido and Caprichoso teams release the year’s music months in advance so that the audience knows all the words, though the performances feature songs from previous editions, too. The style, apart from largely concerning the team and its ox, is music for the masses, with big choruses, ever-spiralling key changes, bombastic horns and charismatic, commanding vocalists.
No one’s going for modesty at Parintins. Typical Brazilian glamour – plastic surgery, notably – was on full show, particularly in the star performers. Influencer, dancer and Big Brother Brasil 2025 contestant Isabelle Nogueira played a central role for the Garantidos, while other main characters – that is, in the tale of the Bumba Meu Boi – were similarly glamourous, fully made-up with heavily framed, ornately feathered outfits.
Besides, modesty wouldn’t feel right. Parintins is rooted in the Amazon, but that doesn’t mean it is restricted to the earthy folklore of indigenous life. It’s also about the region’s myths and legends, the animals and plants that call its rivers and rainforest home, and its intense, varied spectrum of colour. The grandeur of it all is an expression of pride: in the Amazon itself, but also in how it shaped these communities, and how committed they are to protecting it.
Crowd control
Gargantuan alegorias came and went, dancers swirled across the ring, beats shook the foundations of the Bumbodromo, and meanwhile the crowd was well and truly bouncing. The on-stage performance is one element of Parintins, but it is its combination with the audience that makes the event truly special. Not only did the entirety of the Garantido side know all words and dance moves for every song, they did it with gusto; every chorus was hollered, every setting ecstatically embraced. Even as a garanchoso (a fence-sitting neutral), the euphoria was infectious, transmitted simply by being among so many people who cared so much, who felt so strongly.
Throughout the two-and-a-half hours of Garantido performance, the blue Caprichoso fans on the left side of the arena were totally silent. Sitting on their phones, disinterested, waiting their turn. There was no booing or antagonism of the other side, due to the threat of being docked points by the judges if they did.
Once the reds’ first show ended, the blues had half an hour to prep for it all over again. And that’s exactly what happened – the Caprichoso performance was just as spectacular, as committed and ecstatic. The alegorias were as immense (often even taller, in fact), the tunes as anthemic, the choreography as dazzling. In a way that makes sense for a side repping society’s more powerful folks, the Caprichoso set pieces were more polished and glam, with higher-tech lighting and animatronics. The blues’ performance opened with a crane lowering a bird-man hybrid alegoria into the arena as dancers abseiled from its wings – far more technologically advanced than anything in the reds’ set.
Parintins is a glorious cultural event, fuelled by celebrations of culture and rooted in local communities, and it has, so far, mostly resisted the ever-encroaching claws of capitalism and commercialism. Yes, performances are now televised and that partly dictates programming; indeed, advertising beams across the stadium promoting petrochemical, alcohol, aviation and finance companies; the paid-for seats can be exceptionally expensive, ranging from R$550 to R$2,500 (£74-£335, $99-$448), and there’s talk of majorly expanding the Bumbodromo’s capacity to 50,000.
As yet, however, Parintins’ core feels untouched. The vast majority of attendees are there for free, the songs, dances and alegorias are genuine artistic marvels, the Coke and KFC ads are only ever in the corner of your eye. The 2025 festival was the biggest yet, with 125,000 flying in for it – 25,000 more than in 2024 – yet it never felt like the passion had been diluted.
Two more nights of entertainment followed, the reds and blues trading multi-hour performances with different songs, sets, dances and floats, and the winning announcement was delivered around midday on the Monday after the festival. The red Garantido team won, putting an end to a four-year Caprichoso winning streak. But it’s the spectacle of the contest rather than the winner that really matters, and what makes Parintins unlike anything else on Earth.
How to work Parintins festival into a wider trip
Parintins isn’t a particularly accessible place, but in many ways that’s a good thing – not only has it led to the festival being so distinct, but it encourages you to plan the event into a wider visit to northeastern Brazil. Here’s what I did around Parintins Festival 2025.
Manaus
Football/soccer fans might know Manaus best as a host stadium at the 2014 Brazil World Cup. While the city may not be regarded any more for hosting huge sporting events– the Arena da Amazônia now sits mostly unused – there’s a lot more to the biggest city in the Amazon.
In Manaus you’ll find glorious colonial architecture, lively street markets and a thriving food scene (often centred around massive local fish delicacy pirarucu). Further highlights include the Teatro Amazonas – an opera house built at the height of the city’s rubber boom in the 19th century – and the ‘meeting of the waters’, which is the visible point where the murky black River Negro merges with the thickly brown Amazon River. I had two days in the city, and that felt about right.
Manaus is just under an hour’s flight from Parintins, though you can also do the trip by boat. Eduardo Gomes airport has international flights to Lisbon and Miami, and offers many more domestic routes.
The Amazon
Manaus, being slap-bang in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, is a popular gateway for exploring the jungle. Three hours’ bumpy drive upriver from Manaus is the Anavilhanas Jungle Lodge (AJL), which sits on the banks of the River Negro and on edge of the Anavilhanas National Park conservation area. Extraordinary experiences were packed into my two-night, three-day trip: lairy night-time safaris (spotting tarantulas, vipers, caymans), gorgeous sunrise on the river, fascinating guided jungle tours (with more tarantulas) and bushcraft, boat tours of the mesmerising flooded forest. And it was all conscious of the local environment, conservation efforts and indigenous customs.
AJL is a special place indeed. Not only does the lodge have phenomenal activities and proper eco credentials, it’s also properly luxurious, with plush beds, stylish chalets and a slick on-site restaurant. More info available on the official Anavilhanas Jungle Lodge website.
Time Out tips
- On your trip, explore the Amazon before Parintins, not after. The festival is a late-night, stamina-testing, intense event – you don’t want to be battling jet-lag.
- Do as the locals do, and brush up on Parintins songs before the festival; then you’ll be able to yell out the hits just like everyone else.
- Be adventurous with your food. From pirarucu (a kind of giant two-metre fish) and manioc (cassava) to acai berries and insects (including ants and larvae), Amazonas’ food scene is unlike that of anywhere else.
Parintins Festival 2025 took place on June 27-29 2025. Next year’s event will be on June 26-28 2026, and you can find out more about attending on the Visit Brasil website here.