Events

Essaouira’s year comes down to four festivals and one weekly souk. The Printemps Musical des Alizés falls at the end of April, the Gnaoua and World Music Festival at the end of June. MOGA follows where September turns into October, the Andalousies Atlantiques in the autumn. The Festivals section takes them one by one, with their dates, their tickets and what each week does to the town. The souk is the one at Had Draa, held every week. Between these fixtures, concerts and exhibitions are announced week by week. The calendar below shows only what has a date, a venue and a source.

This page explains how to read that calendar and where to look for each kind of event. It lists no events: an event that enters the calendar gets its own page, carrying the source of its date and the day we read it.

How to read the calendar

It starts today and covers the next three months in which something happens, 60 rows at most. A weekly fixture appears only twice a month, with a note naming its day of the week. At the end of the list, a link opens the following month once its page exists. A month page is only created from three dated events. An empty month here is therefore one we could not verify, not one where nothing happens.

A date enters this calendar only once the organiser has published it, on its own site or official page. When only the month is known, the event page says so, without making up a day. A cancelled, postponed or sold-out event stays on its row with that label rather than vanishing. For a festival, the Festivals section follows the editions one by one, and an edition gets its page only once its dates are published.

What the calendar knows, and what it does not yet

As of 16 October 2026, two of the four festivals have published the dates of their next edition: Gnaoua, from 24 to 26 June 2027, and MOGA, from 6 to 10 October 2027, on its official ticketing page. The Andalousies Atlantiques have published no date for 2026, the Printemps Musical des Alizés none for 2027. Its last edition ran from 30 April to 3 May 2026. When an organiser announces a date, the news appears first in News, then the edition joins the calendar. A month without a festival is therefore not an empty month for the town: markets, concerts and exhibitions carry on.

Five pages, five questions

Each section of the Events pages answers one question. Festivals says which to choose and what its week does to the town. Gnaoua and MOGA are not lived the same way at all. Concerts & nights lists the week and the month, outside the festivals. Exhibitions gives the openings and hangings of galleries and cultural venues.

Kite and surf competitions depend on wind and swell. Sport shows them as soon as an organiser publishes a window of dates, and drops the row when it slips. The venues themselves, with their hours and what they are worth, are described in Museums & galleries. The calendar says only what is on and when.

The Had Draa souk is the most regular fixture in the area: it comes round every week. Its day and hours will enter the calendar only once we have checked them on the ground. The other rural markets keep one fixed day per village, and fish has its own addresses. All of that is in Markets & souks, with how to get there without a car.

Choosing your dates

Open the edition’s page before you book, and look at the verification date at the bottom. For a festival week, what the town costs you and how loud it gets are in the festival’s own page. For a week without a festival, When to visit settles it: the wind matters more than the calendar.