Granada International Festival of Music and Dance

The festival traces its roots to the symphonic concerts held in the Palacio de Carlos V within the Alhambra during Corpus Christi celebrations from 1883 onward, and to the influential Concurso de Cante Jondo, a flamenco singing competition organised in 1922 by Federico Garcia Lorca, Manuel de Falla, and fellow artists including guitarist Andres Segovia and painter Ignacio Zuloaga. The festival itself was formally founded in 1952 as the First Festival of Spanish Music and Dance, an initiative of Antonio Gallego Burin, then director general of fine arts, intended to bring cultural life and economic activity to postwar Granada. The inaugural edition featured the dancers Antonio and Rosario, conductor Ataulfo Argenta, soprano Victoria de los Angeles, and Segovia himself. By its second edition in 1953 the festival had adopted its current international name, and the open-air cypress theatre in the Generalife gardens was built specifically to host its dance and ballet performances. Over the decades the festival has welcomed an extraordinary roster of artists, and in 2027 it celebrates its 75th anniversary.

Held each June and July across roughly a month, the festival transforms the palaces and gardens of the Alhambra, along with major monuments, streets, and squares throughout Granada and its province, into stages for classical music, opera, ballet, Spanish dance, and flamenco, drawing around 60,000 spectators every summer. Alongside its central programme, the festival runs the Manuel de Falla International Courses, advanced training sessions held in partnership with the University of Granada, and the FEX or Festival Extension, which brings performances into the streets and public spaces of the city and province with a multicultural, family-friendly programme aimed at younger audiences. Many concerts take place in the Palacio de Carlos V or the cypress-lined open-air theatre of the Generalife gardens, settings that have become inseparable from the festival's international reputation.

Granada has its own airport, Federico Garcia Lorca Granada-Jaen Airport, with a limited number of domestic and seasonal international routes, and is also well connected by high-speed and regional trains and by long-distance coaches from Madrid, Seville, and Malaga. The Alhambra and Generalife, the festival's principal venues, sit on a hill above the city centre and can be reached on foot via a steep uphill walk, by taxi, or by the local minibus service that runs directly to the monument from the centre.

Tickets for the most popular concerts, especially those staged in the Generalife gardens, tend to sell out well ahead of the festival, so book as early as possible once the season's programme is announced. Evenings in the Alhambra's gardens can turn cool even in summer, so bring a light layer for outdoor performances. Arrive with plenty of time before each show, since access to the Alhambra grounds is controlled and security checks can take a while on busy festival nights. Consider combining a concert with a daytime visit to the Alhambra, as palace and garden admission is generally ticketed separately from festival performances.