Equestrian Festivals and Fairs Around the World
Horse festivals are rarely about horses alone. Across the world they braid together several older impulses at once: the sport of racing and display, the commerce of buying and selling stock, the pull of religion and pilgrimage, and the wish of a community to see itself reflected in its animals for a few days a year. Some of the gatherings below are working markets where money still changes hands over a handshake; others are races run in the same square for seven centuries, or sacred journeys where the horse is simply the way one travels to a shrine. A few are not fairs at all but living schools of horsemanship. What follows is a guide to ten of the most significant, with an honest note on what each one actually is.
Feria del Caballo, Jerez de la Frontera, Spain
Held each May in the Andalusian sherry town of Jerez de la Frontera, the Feria del Caballo is among the most horse-centred of Spain's great ferias. The fairground at Parque González Hontoria fills with casetas, riders in the short jacket and wide-brimmed sombrero cordobés, and women in the ruffled traje de gitana, while carriage teams and enganches parade through the afternoons. The horses on show are largely the Andalusian, and Jerez is also home to the Real Escuela Andaluza del Arte Ecuestre, whose choreographed exhibition sits alongside the fair as a formal counterpoint to the street celebration.
Feira Nacional do Cavalo, Golegã, Portugal
Golegã, a small town in the Ribatejo north of Lisbon, calls itself the capital of the horse, and for good reason. Its Feira Nacional do Cavalo runs in November around the feast of São Martinho on the eleventh, filling the sandy showground and streets with the Lusitano, Portugal's baroque saddle breed. Riders school and show their stallions in hand and under saddle while stalls sell roasted chestnuts and água-pé, the light young wine of the season. It is a breeder's fair first and a spectacle second, and the standard of horse on display is exceptional.
Naadam, Mongolia
Mongolia's national festival, Naadam, centres on what Mongolians call the three manly games: wrestling, archery, and horse racing. The main celebration falls in mid-July, and the racing is nothing like a track meeting — horses run cross-country over open steppe for distances that vary by age category, sometimes well over twenty kilometres. The jockeys are children, often between five and thirteen, chosen for their light weight and riding the tough, small Mongolian horses. The emphasis is on the endurance and breeding of the horse as much as the outcome of any single race.
Palio di Siena, Italy
The Palio di Siena is a bareback horse race run around the Piazza del Campo, the sloping shell-shaped square at the heart of the Tuscan city, and it happens twice each summer: on 2 July and again on 16 August. Ten of the city's seventeen contrade, or historic wards, compete in each running, their horses assigned by lot, over three frantic laps of the packed-earth track laid around the piazza. The rivalries between contrade are fierce and year-round, and a horse can even win riderless, so the event is far more than a tourist spectacle. A long historical procession in medieval costume precedes the race itself.
Appleby Horse Fair, England
Every June the small Cumbrian town of Appleby-in-Westmorland hosts the largest traditional gathering of Gypsy and Traveller communities in Europe. The Appleby Horse Fair is above all a working horse market, with trading centred on Fair Hill, but its most photographed moments come at the River Eden, where horses are washed and then trotted, or flashed, along the lane so buyers can judge their action. The fair has roots stretching back centuries and remains a genuine cultural institution rather than a staged show, drawing tens of thousands of visitors alongside the Travelling families for whom it is a fixture of the year.
Pushkar Fair and the Marwari, Rajasthan, India
The Pushkar Fair, held in the desert town of Pushkar in Rajasthan around the Kartik Purnima full moon in October or November, is primarily a camel and livestock fair wrapped around a major Hindu pilgrimage to the sacred lake and the Brahma temple. Horses are traded and shown here too, and it is one of the places to see the Marwari, Rajasthan's indigenous breed, recognisable by the distinctive inward-curving tips of its ears. Marwari horses appear in competitions and processions across the region, often decorated and paraded, so the fair is worth seeing for its horses even though the camels give it its name.
Spanish Riding School, Vienna, Austria
The Spanish Riding School in Vienna is not a fair at all but a school of classical horsemanship, in continuous operation since the sixteenth century. Its white Lipizzaner stallions are trained in the haute école, the high-school movements of the old European masters, and perform in the baroque Winter Riding School inside the Hofburg palace. Visitors can attend both the formal performances and the less scripted morning training sessions. It belongs in any survey of horse culture as the guardian of a living tradition, distinct from the seasonal markets and races elsewhere on this list.
Calgary Stampede, Canada
Each July the city of Calgary, in the Canadian province of Alberta, stages the Calgary Stampede, billed as the greatest outdoor show on earth. Its heart is a professional rodeo — bronc and bull riding, roping and barrel racing — but the signature equestrian event is the chuckwagon racing of the Rangeland Derby, in which teams of horses haul wagons around a track at speed. The ten-day event grew out of early twentieth-century Wild West shows and agricultural exhibitions and now combines competition, western heritage and a large midway. It is the pre-eminent celebration of the horse in the North American ranching tradition.
Romería del Rocío, Spain
The Romería del Rocío is a pilgrimage rather than a race or a market, but the horse is central to it. At Pentecost, fifty days after Easter, hundreds of brotherhoods travel to the hamlet of El Rocío in Huelva province to venerate an image of the Virgin known as La Blanca Paloma. Many make the journey on horseback and in ox-drawn covered wagons, crossing the countryside on the fringe of the Doñana wetlands over several days. The sight of riders and carts converging on the sandy village is one of the most striking in Andalusia, and horsemanship and religious devotion are inseparable here.
Fantasia and Tbourida, Morocco
The Moroccan fantasia, known in Arabic as tbourida, is a performance descended from cavalry warfare rather than a sale or a race. A troupe of riders lines up knee to knee on Barb and Arab-Barb horses, charges forward together at full gallop, and at the climax discharges their long gunpowder muskets in a single synchronised volley, the unity of that final shot being the mark of a good performance. It is staged at moussems, the seasonal festivals held across the country, and the tradition has been recognised on UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage. Both the horsemanship and the ornate saddlery and dress are integral to the display.
Royal Ascot and the Kentucky Derby
Two of the world's most famous flat races are as much social occasions as sporting ones, and it is worth being clear which is which. Royal Ascot, held each June at Ascot in Berkshire, is a British turf meeting known for its royal carriage procession, strict dress codes and the extravagant hats of Ladies' Day. The Kentucky Derby, run on the first Saturday of May at Churchill Downs in Louisville, is the opening leg of the American Triple Crown, a race on dirt famous for mint juleps and its own tradition of elaborate millinery. Both draw crowds who come for the spectacle and the occasion as much as the racing.
These gatherings sit thousands of miles apart yet share a common thread, and you can trace the routes between them, or plan a trip around one, using the interactive map.