San Fermín 2026 is underway. Day 2 of 9.
Pamplona’s running of the bulls is why Encierro exists, and our instructors run the course themselves every July rather than watching it from a balcony. This is our encierro news July 2026 coverage of the fiesta’s first actual running. What happens on the route shapes how every runner behind us prepares for it.
First encierro of San Fermín 2026 runs with Fuente Ymbro bulls, extending a historic clean streak
Navarra.com / El Español, July 7, 2026
The first encierro of San Fermín 2026 ran at 8:00 AM on July 7, with six fighting bulls from the Fuente Ymbro ranch of Ricardo Gallardo covering the route from the corrals of Santo Domingo to the Plaza de Toros in 2 minutes and 16 seconds. Four people required medical attention; three were transported to hospital with contusions. No gorings.
The result extended one of the most unusual streaks in modern encierro history. Fuente Ymbro had run nine consecutive years in Pamplona without a single goring, a record for any ranch in the 21st century. In 18 total appearances at San Fermín, the ranch has produced just five goring injuries, with 78 percent of its races ending without any horn contact. The 2026 run became the tenth straight appearance without a goring.
The six bulls running July 7 were Taranto (595 kg), Improvisado (610 kg, the heaviest of the six), Botellero (570 kg), Escribiente (575 kg), Manirroto (570 kg), and Fanfarrón (585 kg). Before the run, at 6:45 AM, 247 runners received the traditional ribbons of San Fermín at the chapel of San Lorenzo in the Casco Viejo during the blessing of the participants.
The run also carried a quiet tribute. Alfonso Vázquez, mayoral (head herder) of the Fuente Ymbro ranch, had died before the festival. He had overseen the preparation of the bulls during every year of the ranch’s clean record in Pamplona. Pamplona remembered him on the morning of July 7.
Compiled by the Encierro editorial team. encierro.com tracks Pamplona’s encierro, its city, and its fiesta year-round, with instruction from active bull runners who have run San Fermín for decades.
July 7 sets the hottest día grande on record for San Fermín
Noticias de Navarra / Martin Cid Magazine, July 7-8, 2026
The temperature at Pamplona’s airport weather station reached 41.4°C on July 7, 2026, making it officially the hottest día grande in the recorded history of San Fermín. The previous record was 40.8°C, set in 1982. Navarra was under an orange meteorological alert from AEMET from midday through 9 PM.
Regional health services had recorded 83 heat related medical cases in the opening days of July, triple the count from the same period the prior year. The city placed six large screens at key plazas to reduce crowding in the hottest zones and distributed hydration advisories throughout the day. Children’s outdoor activities at several festival areas were suspended from noon to 5 PM during peak heat hours.
The heat did not stop anyone. Thousands of people in white and red filled Estafeta and Santo Domingo well before the 8 AM encierro start, and the afternoon procession drew comparable crowds. Festival organizers noted that alcohol, central to the social fabric of San Fermín, accelerates dehydration and urged consistent water intake throughout the day.
Sources: Noticias de Navarra (July 8, 2026); Martin Cid Magazine (July 7, 2026)
The Sun Also Rises turns 100: the centennial that built this crowd
The Washington Post / Martin Cid Magazine, July 6-7, 2026
Ernest Hemingway published The Sun Also Rises in October 1926, one year after the July in Pamplona he was describing. He first attended San Fermín in 1923 as a 24 year old correspondent for the Toronto Star and returned eight more times. The novel made Pamplona legible to the English-speaking world and created a mechanism for sending new waves of visitors to the city every July with no mechanism for stopping.
In 2026, the book turns 100. Multiple American outlets published centennial features around the festival’s opening days, sending a specific wave of literary tourists into a city already at capacity. Americans are the single largest national group of foreign runners in the encierro, according to Pamplona city officials. One tour operator working with the festival brought approximately 1,400 visitors to Pamplona this year, more than two thirds of them from the United States.
Hemingway’s view of what he had created darkened over time. Writing in 1959, he described returning to the Pamplona he remembered “except forty thousand tourists have been added,” and framed the observation as loss. In 2026, that arithmetic looks like nostalgia for a simpler problem. A study commissioned by Pamplona city hall calculated the festival’s total economic impact at 259.4 million euros for 2025, drawing 424,369 unique visitors and an average satisfaction rating of 8.9 out of 10.
Sources: The Washington Post (July 6, 2026); Martin Cid Magazine (July 7, 2026)
Día grande procession adapts to heat, delivers a special 50th anniversary tribute
Diario de Navarra, July 7, 2026
July 7 is San Fermín’s día grande (the festival’s biggest day, marking the saint’s feast). The afternoon procession kept its full route through the Casco Viejo, cut down to two official stops as planned Monday because of the heat, and still ran close to its usual 90 minutes as temperatures held near 30 to 35°C. At the Plaza del Consejo stop, the Coral Santiago marked the Jota Ofrenda a San Fermín’s 50th anniversary (as we reported July 4 and July 5) with a first ever joint performance: soloists from all five decades of the piece sang in rotation, including a tribute to Alfonso Royo, its male voice for 32 years until his death in 2017. At the Pocico de San Cernin stop, Ainhoa González Zudaire performed with the municipal txistulari band, her procession debut after becoming the ensemble’s first woman in more than 80 years (as we reported July 5). Read the original article.
Compiled by the Encierro editorial team. encierro.com tracks Pamplona’s encierro, its city, and its fiesta year-round, with instruction from active bull runners who have run San Fermín for decades.
Evening of the día grande: fireworks, fire bull, and the streets past midnight
Ayuntamiento de Pamplona, July 7, 2026
July 7 is San Fermín’s día grande, the feast day itself, and the evening program reflects that. At 21:45, the Toro de Fuego — the fire bull, a figure carried through the streets with fireworks erupting from it as crowds scatter — ran its route from Cuesta de Santo Domingo through Plaza Consistorial and into Calle Nueva. At 23:00, the XXIII International Fireworks Competition opened its first night at the Ciudadela, drawing crowds from across the old town. The evening concerts ran simultaneously across several plazas: Puttaneska played Plaza de la Compañía, Orquesta Los Aliados ran a verbena at Plaza de la Cruz, and DJ Lady Bueno held Plaza de los Fueros. Pamplona’s peñas — the social clubs that form the spine of the fiesta — kept the streets moving until well past midnight.