Is MassKara on the third or the fourth Sunday of October?

The highlights fall on the third Sunday. Bacolod's city council amended its festival ordinance in April 2025 to move them from the fourth Sunday, although the 2018 national statute names the fourth.

What does MassKara mean?

It joins 'mass', meaning a multitude of people, with the Spanish word cara, face. The result also echoes the Filipino word maskara, mask.

When did the MassKara Festival start?

The first festival was held on 19 October 1980, in a year when the Negros sugar industry had collapsed and the MV Don Juan had sunk on its way to Bacolod.

Masskara Festival

Next celebratedSunday, October 18, 2026

Every October, Bacolod City fills its streets with dancers in grinning masks. The face the city shows the world is deliberate, and it is why Bacolod answers to the name City of Smiles.

See how to celebrate

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Last updated September 2, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEThird Sunday in October

OBSERVED INPhilippines

CATEGORYCulture

SUBCATEGORYRegional

ORIGIN

Event Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY

City Government of Bacolod

FIRST OBSERVED

1980

“A city answered a year of hunger and shipwreck with a party.

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

A festival built over a very bad year.

The MassKara Festival began in Bacolod City in 1980, a year in which the collapse of sugar prices had gutted the Negros economy and the Negros Navigation vessel MV Don Juan had sunk with Bacolodnons and Negrenses aboard. The city government under Mayor Jose 'Digoy' Montalvo funded a festival of smiles and drew in the city's artists and civic groups, and the first one was held on 19 October 1980.

Read PNA on the festival's originvia Philippine News Agency

INTRO

Bacolod moved its biggest party to dodge late October's storms

Late October in the Philippines is the tail of the typhoon season. That is where Bacolod City had long held the MassKara Festival highlights, the loudest weekend of its year. In April 2025 the city council moved them a week earlier, and the reason it gave was not ceremony but weather and money.

Two resolutions of the Sangguniang Panlungsod shifted the highlights from the fourth Sunday of October to the third. The city said the change would minimize the impact of severe weather disturbances and keep the vendors trading.

What makes that unusual is what it moved away from. A national statute approved on 9 November 2018, Republic Act 11146, carries a proviso that the highlights of the festival "shall be held every 4th Sunday of October". Bacolod now runs the party on a city ordinance instead.

AT A GLANCE

MassKara Festival at a glance

Where: Bacolod City, Negros Occidental, Philippines
Name: 'mass' for people, plus the Spanish cara, face
Organiser: Bacolod Gugma Foundation Inc., with the city government
Festival director: Rodney Mitz Ascalon
Main venues: Bacolod Public Plaza, Lacson Tourism Strip, Bacolod City Government Center, Paglaum Sports Complex
Schedule rule: City Ordinance No. 09-17-820, as amended by Resolution No. 249, s. 2025
2026 run: October 1 to 18, highlights from October 9

ORIGINS

Masskara Festival history

INTRODUCTION

On 22 April 1980 the MV Don Juan left Manila for Bacolod. Off Mindoro, in the Tablas Strait, it collided with an oil tanker and went down. Bacolodnons and Negrenses were among the dead.

The province was already in trouble. Negros lived on sugar, and its overseas buyers were switching to cheaper substitutes such as corn syrup. The industry fell, and the families whose only income was cane fell with it.

CHAPTER 01

Beer, songs, and a smiling mask

What Bacolod reached for was a party. The city government under Mayor Jose "Digoy" Montalvo put up a seed fund and pulled in the city's artists, civic groups and business people.

Five men met at a videoke bar on the ground floor of the Negros Press Club, along San Juan Street. Over nearly two weeks of beer, sing-alongs and what one of them remembers as heated discussions, they built a festival. Montalvo resisted the idea at first, then relented.

The broadcaster Angelino "Jun" Julita, who was in the room, says the name came from Ramon de la Luna, a radio station manager, along with the tagline "Smiling outside, crying inside". Other accounts credit the artist Ely Santiago with coining it. Both agree Santiago designed the smiling mask, and the first MassKara was held on 19 October 1980.

CHAPTER 02

Written into the statute book

For decades the schedule was Bacolod's own affair. In 2017 the council put it on a legal footing with City Ordinance No. 09-17-820.

The national law arrived next, and it was really about a different mistake. Bacolod had spent 80 years marking its Charter Day on the wrong date. Its lone district representative, Greg Gasataya, filed House Bill 7044 to correct it.

Republic Act No. 11146 moved Charter Day to 18 June, the date President Manuel L. Quezon signed the city's charter in 1938, and repealed the law that had put it in October. The festival's highlight Sunday rode into national law inside the same sentence.

CHAPTER 03

The year the masks stayed in their boxes

In September 2020 Mayor Evelio Leonardia issued Executive Order 62 and suspended the festival for Covid-19. "Can you imagine for 40 straight years we had the MassKara and it is only now that the festival has been suspended," he told a radio interviewer. Bacolodnons marked the 41st year on cable television and social media instead.

The festival came back. The representative who wrote its Sunday into national law is now the mayor of Bacolod, and Greg Gasataya presides over a MassKara that keeps a different Sunday altogether.

TIMELINE

Timeline

Quezon signs the city charter

President Manuel L. Quezon approved Commonwealth Act No. 326 on 18 June, creating the City of Bacolod, and the first city officials were inaugurated that October.

A ship goes down off Mindoro

The MV Don Juan sank on 22 April after colliding with an oil tanker while sailing from Manila to Bacolod.

The first MassKara is held

Bacolod staged its first festival of smiles on 19 October, months into the collapse of the sugar industry that fed the province.

The city legislates the schedule

City Ordinance No. 09-17-820 put the festival calendar on a formal legal footing for the first time.

Congress names the highlight Sunday

Republic Act No. 11146, approved on 9 November, corrected Bacolod City Charter Day and fixed the festival highlights on the fourth Sunday of October.

The highlights move a week earlier

Two resolutions of the city council shifted the highlights to the third Sunday of October, and the 46th edition closed on 19 October.

BY THE NUMBERS

MassKara Festival by the Numbers

PHP1M: Champion barangay's cash prize
PHP500,000: First runner-up's cash prize
19 days: Length of the 2025 festival
0: Crimes recorded at 2025 festival sites
46th: MassKara edition held in 2025

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love MassKara Festival

ECONOMY

Sugar built Negros. Tourism now helps hold it up.

By 2019 sugar ranked only second in Bacolod's economy, behind service sectors including tourism, telecommunications, banking and business process outsourcing. The head of the Metro Bacolod chamber of commerce credited the festival with helping Negros sustain that tourism.

LIVELIHOOD

A selling season, not just a spectacle

Vendors and small entrepreneurs had struggled for years with unpredictable weather in the latter part of October, which cut into their earnings. The organisers rebuilt the festival calendar around that problem.

SCHOOLS

The student dancers came back

The street and arena dance competition for students returned in 2025 after a five-year gap, having last been held in 2019. Mayor Greg Gasataya recommended keeping the category for the following year's celebration.

Rain or shine, our people continue to smile, create, and celebrate life together

Rodney Mitz AscalonFestival director, Bacolod Gugma Foundation Inc.

Your MassKara Festival continues to bring inspiration and hope. Thank you, Bacolod, for always reminding us of the power of love and hope that we see in every smile and in every dance

Christina Garcia-FrascoPhilippine Secretary of Tourism

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate MassKara Festival

Watch the arena and street dance finals

The barangay competition is one of the festival's most anticipated events, with an arena round at the sports complex before the street round in the public plaza. Contingents also take side awards for mask and costume, music, theme, and discipline.

TIME

Time a visit to the highlight window

The festival runs for more than two weeks, but the major events and highlights are packed into the closing stretch. Booking around that window is the difference between seeing the competitions and seeing the decorations.

WALK

Walk the tourism strip in the evening

Lacson Tourism Strip and the Bacolod City Government Center drew the largest crowds during the 2025 highlight weekend. Both are official festival sites, so an evening spent walking them lands you inside the event.

Follow the organiser for the real schedule

The Bacolod Gugma Foundation Inc. runs the festival under an agreement with the city government and publishes the official programme. Dates and venues shift year to year, so the organiser's own announcements are worth more than a general listing.

MAKE

Make a smiling mask of your own

The grinning mask is the festival's signature, and a Bacolod painter and cartoonist is credited with designing it. Building one at home is the cheapest way into the tradition from outside Negros.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know Masskara Festival?

1 / 8

What does the 'cara' in MassKara mean?

Answer

No. Republic Act No. 11146 makes 18 June a special nonworking holiday in Bacolod as Bacolod City Charter Day, and it does not give that status to the MassKara Sunday.