Pamplona holds a second San Fermín festival every year, and most descriptions of it get the relationship backward. San Fermín Txikito, formally San Fermín de Aldapa and sometimes written San Fermín Chiquito in Spanish, is usually introduced as a miniature version of July’s Sanfermines: same saint, smaller crowd, no bulls. That framing has it upside down. The September date is the older of Pamplona’s two San Fermín observances. The July fiesta is the one that moved.
The distinction matters because it changes what the neighborhood is actually doing every late September. This isn’t a scaled-back tribute act staged for tourists who missed the big show in July. It’s the direct, never-relocated continuation of the date tradition holds as the saint’s actual martyrdom, held in the specific corner of Pamplona’s Old Town that local legend ties to his life. Understanding why requires knowing a piece of Pamplona calendar history that gets left out of nearly every English-language description of this event: the July date isn’t original either.
This account draws on the 2026 event listing published by Visit Navarra, the Navarra regional government’s tourism authority, on reporting from the Navarra edition of elDiario.es that traces the 1591 calendar change to a specific bishop and a specific reason, and on the Wikipedia entry for the Iglesia de San Fermín de Aldapa, itself sourced to the Ayuntamiento de Pamplona’s own building records and a public domain 1904 Pamplona guidebook. Where the underlying legend is disputed by historians, that’s stated directly rather than repeated as settled fact.
Two Feast Days, One Saint
Pamplona’s patron saint has two dates on the city’s calendar, and only one of them has stayed put. September 25 marks the day tradition holds that San Fermín was beheaded in Amiens, France, in the early fourth century, commonly dated to around 303 AD, during the persecutions ordered under the emperor Diocletian. This date has never moved. It is the anchor for San Fermín de Aldapa, the neighborhood observance now popularly called San Fermín Txikito.
July 7 is the newer arrangement. Before 1591, Pamplona’s main civic festival honoring the saint was fixed on October 10, not July. That year, the Bishop of Pamplona relocated the celebration to July 7 at the town’s own request, for two practical reasons: better summer weather for an outdoor festival, and alignment with the annual cattle fair (feria de ganado) already scheduled for that time of year. The encierro, the bullring, the txupinazo balcony rocket, all of it grew up around that relocated July date over the following centuries.
So when San Fermín Txikito is described as the small version of the big July festival, the history runs the other way. September 25 is the original, unmoved feast day. July 7 is the date the city picked for convenience four and a half centuries later, and then built an internationally famous festival around. Pamplona ended up with two San Fermín observances not because someone invented a junior edition, but because the civic calendar shifted and the older devotional date simply kept going in its own corner of the Old Town, at a much smaller scale, without ever being retired.
The Aldapa Neighborhood and Its Disputed Legend
The name comes directly from the ground it sits on. Aldapa is Basque for slope or incline. A 1904 Pamplona guidebook, written by Fernando de Alvarado and now in the public domain, states the equivalence plainly: San Fermín de Aldapa is, in Spanish, San Fermín de la Cuesta, “San Fermín of the Slope.” The name refers to the rise of ground near the old Cuesta del Palacio in the Casco Viejo, where local tradition places the house San Fermín supposedly lived in after his ordination as a priest, and where legend also places his birth.
The current Iglesia de San Fermín de Aldapa stands on that site, at Calle Dos de Mayo 11 in Pamplona’s Old Town. The building dates to 1828 and holds Mass daily. It belongs to the Cabildo Catedral, the Pamplona cathedral chapter, and since 1883 has been home to the Misioneros Hijos del Inmaculado Corazón de María, the Claretian order, who carried out major restoration work there.
Here is the part standard coverage skips. The legend behind the site, that Fermín was born in Pamplona as the son of a Roman senator of Pompaelo before eventually being martyred in Amiens, crystallized centuries after his supposed lifetime, sometime around the late tenth or early eleventh century according to historian Ricardo Fernández Gracia. It is not documented history. A 1970 joint investigation by Navarrese historians working with an archaeologist from Amiens concluded the San Fermín legend, as commonly told, has no solid historical foundation, a finding the historian Roldán Jimeno Aranguren has separately affirmed. None of that erases the tradition’s centuries of local weight. It does mean the Aldapa church and neighborhood carry a devotional story that Pamplona’s own historians treat as legend, not record, and an honest account of the place should say so rather than repeat the birthplace claim as fact.
What Actually Happens During San Fermín Txikito
San Fermín Txikito runs for one weekend at the end of September, centered on Calle Aldapa, Plaza de San José, and the streets around the Iglesia de San Lorenzo in the Casco Viejo. Visit Navarra, the Navarra regional tourism board, confirmed the 2026 dates as September 25 to 27, organized jointly by the Ayuntamiento de Pamplona and the Asociación Casco Viejo alongside the neighborhood’s own festival commissions and residents’ associations. The city government’s financial contribution is capped at roughly 6,500 euros, covering the stages, tents, and toilets needed to run three days of street festival in the Old Town. Access is free.
The program mirrors July’s traditions at a fraction of the size. A comparsa of gigantes y cabezudos, the same giant and bighead figures that parade during the main fiesta, tours the neighborhood. There’s a smaller toro de fuego, a fire-bull run through the streets, and the festival opens with its own modest txupinazo rocket, nothing close to the crowd or scale of the July 6 launch from the Ayuntamiento balcony. Beyond that: communal street almuerzos, an artisan craft market, matches of pelota and frontenis, demonstrations of traditional Navarran rural sports, inflatables for children, and open-air evening dances (verbenas) in the old town’s squares.
What’s absent is just as defining as what’s there. There is no encierro during San Fermín Txikito, and no bullring events of any kind. Regional press coverage consistently describes it as “the fiesta for the people of Pamplona,” a weekend that belongs to residents and the Casco Viejo itself rather than to the global audience July draws. It is, in effect, the version of San Fermín that existed before tourism scale became part of the story.
Not to Be Confused With Encierro Txiki
San Fermín Txikito is frequently mixed up with a completely different event that happens to share the “txiki” name: Encierro Txiki, the children’s mock bull run held on Calle Mercaderes during the main July fiesta, with volunteers or foam-horned figures standing in for bulls. The two have nothing in common beyond both being smaller, kid-and-community-scale versions of something bigger. Encierro Txiki is a July event tied directly to Sanfermines week and the encierro tradition itself. San Fermín Txikito is a separate September festival on its own calendar date, with its own patron-saint history, held two and a half months after the July fiesta ends. Confusing the two means missing that Pamplona effectively keeps two distinct San Fermín traditions running on two different calendars for two different reasons, one civic and internationally known, one older, local, and devotional.
Frequently Asked Questions
When is San Fermín Txikito 2026?
The Ayuntamiento de Pamplona and Visit Navarra confirmed the 2026 dates as September 25 to 27, a three-day weekend centered on the Casco Viejo neighborhood around Calle Aldapa.
Is there a bull run during San Fermín Txikito?
No. There is no encierro and no bullring event during San Fermín Txikito. The festival includes a smaller toro de fuego, a fire-bull street run, but nothing resembling the July encierro.
What is the difference between San Fermín Txikito and Encierro Txiki?
They are unrelated events that happen to share a similar name. Encierro Txiki is a children’s mock bull run held during the July Sanfermines on Calle Mercaderes. San Fermín Txikito is a separate September neighborhood festival, held roughly two and a half months later, centered on the Aldapa neighborhood and its church.
Why does Pamplona celebrate San Fermín twice a year?
Because the city’s two San Fermín dates have different origins. September 25 marks the saint’s traditional martyrdom date and has never been moved. July 7 became the main civic festival date only in 1591, when Pamplona’s bishop relocated the celebration from its original October 10 date for better weather and to align with the annual cattle fair.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.