San Fermín 2026 is underway. Day 3 of 9.
The encierro changes every morning with the ganadería (bull-breeding ranch) running that day, which is exactly why Encierro’s instructors study each one instead of treating the route as fixed. This is our encierro news July 2026 coverage of the fiesta’s second running, the first to draw blood.
Second encierro of San Fermín 2026 delivers the festival’s first goring, from its most dangerous ranch
Noticias de Navarra / Navarra.com / El Español, July 8, 2026
The second encierro of San Fermín 2026 ran on July 8 with six bulls from the Cebada Gago ranch of Cádiz, one of the most feared ganadería in the festival’s modern history. The herd completed the route in 2 minutes and 26 seconds, running compact through most of the course. Three runners required attention; one was transferred to the University of Navarra Hospital with a horn wound to the right arm. That runner, a 23 year old from Idiazabal in Gipuzkoa, was gored by the bull known as Pintado in the Telefónica section. The wound was classified as a minor puncture and he was discharged after evaluation. It was the first goring of San Fermín 2026.
Cebada Gago’s statistics explain the anticipation before every run they make. In 35 appearances in Pamplona, the ranch has produced 62 goring injuries, an average of 1.77 per encierro. In 66 percent of their runs, at least one runner has been gored. No ranch in the current festival rotation carries a comparable injury rate. Runners who have studied the route know Cebada Gago encierros tend to break apart, scatter, and produce the most dangerous individual animal contact of any ganadería in San Fermín.
The Cruz Roja attended to 45 people during the second encierro. DYA Navarra, which covers the full festival day, attended 98 people on July 8 in total, with 33 transported by ambulance.
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 8 is the Día de la Jota — for the fifth consecutive year
Navarra Información, Ayuntamiento de Pamplona, July 8, 2026
The Pamplona city council has dedicated one full day of San Fermín to the jota navarra for five straight years, and July 8 is that day in 2026. The jota — the traditional dance and song genre of Navarra and Aragón — was formally recognized as a Representative Manifestation of Immaterial Cultural Heritage by Spain’s Council of Ministers in 2023, and its place in the fiesta program has grown since. The day’s programming included a morning jota concert at Plaza San José from the Valtierra School of Jotas under the “Sounds of Jota” cycle, two jota rounds through the streets of the old city organized by the Navarre School of Jotas, and an evening performance by the Gracia Navarra ensemble departing from the Encierro Monument on Roncesvalles Avenue. It is one of the few moments in the fiesta calendar where the deeper Navarran cultural tradition gets space alongside the international spectacle of the encierro.
Runner fined after filming the encierro with Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses
Xataka / Noticias de Navarra / El Español, July 8-9, 2026
A foreign runner was identified and sanctioned after filming the second encierro from inside the route using Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, then posting the footage to TikTok. The video reached nearly 20,000 views before Pamplona’s Municipal Police traced the account. Officers cross-referenced the TikTok footage with images captured at the encierro access checkpoints, identified the runner, and issued a fine. The glasses were confiscated.
The legal basis is Article 4.11 of Pamplona’s municipal encierro ordinance, which expressly prohibits “cualquier medio grabador de imagen o sonido” (any image or sound recording device) on the route and in the reserved enclosures, without exception. Fines under the ordinance range from 601 to 6,000 euros depending on how the infraction is classified.
The city’s stated justification, as reported by Xataka citing the Ayuntamiento’s position, is that recording from inside the encierro can cause a runner to trip, divert attention, or endanger other participants. The ordinance treats the act of recording as a safety risk independent of the technology used. A secondary legal concern applies when footage of third parties is published without consent: Spain’s Ley Orgánica 1/1982, which covers the right to honor, intimacy, and one’s own image, establishes the framework under which posting such footage can constitute an unlawful intrusion.
The case is not the first of its kind. GoPro attempts predate smart glasses in the encierro by years, and the Policía Foral has previously confiscated cameras from runners who brought them onto the route knowing the ban existed. What made the July 8 case notable was the near-invisibility of the recording device: Ray-Ban Meta glasses are indistinguishable from ordinary sunglasses at a glance, with only a small LED indicator showing when the camera is active. Xataka noted that some runners have taped over that LED to suppress the visible signal entirely. By the end of the first three encierros of San Fermín 2026, police had confiscated approximately 50 devices in total.
Source: Xataka, July 9, 2026; Noticias de Navarra, July 8, 2026