The Running of the Bulls

By Dennis Clancey, bull runner in Pamplona since 2007. Last updated November 11, 2026 (update log).

The Running of the Bulls at a Glance

What Is the Running of the Bulls (El Encierro)?

The running of the bulls is the encierro: the last stretch of bringing the day's fighting bulls into the city, from a corral at the bottom of the old town to the bullring, through streets closed off with wooden fences. The bulls that run in the morning are the ones fought in the bullring that evening. People run in front of them and beside them for a few seconds each, and the whole herd usually reaches the ring in two to three minutes.

When English speakers say "the running of the bulls," they almost always mean Pamplona's. Many towns in Spain, France, Portugal and Mexico run bulls through their streets, but Pamplona's is the one the world knows, held at the same hour on the same eight mornings every year. In Spanish it is el encierro de San Fermín, and the eight runs of the festival are los encierros de San Fermín. People who do it simply call it running with the bulls.

The running of the bulls is not the bullfight. The encierro is the run through the streets in the morning; the corrida, the bullfight, is held in the bullring in the evening.

The herd runs with six steers, cabestros, who know the way and keep the bulls together. Herders called pastores walk and run the route with long sticks to move the bulls along, and dobladores with capes wait in the ring to draw the bulls through to the pens. More on all of it in how to run with the bulls and the Spanish fighting bull.

What Does Encierro Mean?

Encierro means penning or shutting in: it comes from the Spanish verb encerrar, to enclose. In the bull world it named the last act of moving bulls to the place where they would be fought. "That was the true encierro," wrote the Pamplona historian Luis del Campo of that final stage.¹ The running is a side effect of the penning: the bulls are being put away, and people run with them. So the meaning of encierro in English is the penning of the bulls, while the English name, the running of the bulls, describes the people running with them.

In Basque, the other language of Navarra, it is the entzierroa; the City of Pamplona's Basque pages call the route "Entzierroaren ibilbidea."⁴

Encierro or entrada?

Pamplona once had a second word for it: la entrada, the entrance, the bringing in of the bulls. The two lived side by side. On July 6, 1903, the mayor's bando printed in Diario de Navarra announced "el encierro del ganado, según tradicional costumbre," the encierro of the cattle, by traditional custom, at six in the morning on bullfight days. A year later, on July 9, 1904, the same paper's programme read "A las seis de la mañana se verificará la entrada de los toros," at six in the morning the entrada of the bulls will take place.² In the 1870s a rumour that the council would suspend the "entrada" set off a public argument.³

Encierro was already the more common word by then. In Diario de Navarra's July issues from 1903 to 1909, "el encierro" appears about 93 times and "entrada de los toros" about 11; by the 1920s the second had almost gone.² Encierro was the preferred word then, and it is the word today.

The running of the bulls in other languages

More words of the fiesta are in our running of the bulls vocabulary.

Where Is the Running of the Bulls in Spain?

The running of the bulls takes place in Pamplona, Spain, the capital of Navarra in the north of the country, in the streets of the old town. The route starts at the corrals at the foot of the Cuesta de Santo Domingo, climbs past the Town Hall square, turns through Mercaderes into the long straight of Estafeta, drops down Telefónica and through a narrow passage, the callejón, into the bullring: 848.6 meters in all.⁷ Every fence, wall, doorway and slope is on our bull run map.

When Is the Running of the Bulls? Dates for 2027

The running of the bulls is at 8:00 every morning from July 7 to 14, eight runs in all, during the festival of San Fermín, which opens with the chupinazo rocket at noon on July 6 and ends at midnight on July 14. The dates never move; only the weekdays change.

In 2027, San Fermín begins with the chupinazo at noon on Tuesday, July 6; the first running of the bulls is at 8:00 on Wednesday, July 7, and the eighth and last is at 8:00 on Wednesday, July 14. 8:00 in Pamplona is 7:00 in London, 2:00 a.m. in New York and 11:00 p.m. the night before in Los Angeles.

The night before each run, the bulls are moved from the outer corrals across the river to the corrals of Santo Domingo, a short transfer called the encierrillo. Which ranch runs on which morning is announced months ahead; it is on our San Fermín 2027 page, and every past year is in San Fermín by year.

What is San Fermín?

San Fermín, also called the Sanfermines, is Pamplona's festival for its patron saint, Fermín, whose feast day is July 7. It runs for nine days, from the chupinazo at noon on July 6 to midnight on July 14, with processions, music, fireworks, the peñas and the bullfights, and the running of the bulls is the event the festival is known for around the world.

How a Run Works, Minute by Minute

A run morning follows the same order every day: entry, the chant, four rockets, two or three minutes of running, and the young cows in the ring.

The rockets, the order of the morning and the 2026 entry rule come from the City of Pamplona's own ordinance and rules for runners.⁵ How to choose a stretch, when to go, what to do if you fall, and our free 18-minute film are in how to run with the bulls.

Watch a run, street by street

Our free 18-minute film, the Definitive Guide to Running with the Bulls, walks the whole route and the run morning with active runners. It is in 16 languages.

Why Do They Run with the Bulls?

People run with the bulls for the thrill of being next to the animal for a few seconds, and that is why they first did it. Dennis Clancey puts it this way:

"It started with this sense of being able to be in the presence of this revered animal, so people would jump in the streets for moments."

The fighting bull is honoured in Navarra, and a few seconds beside one, in the street, at a run, is still what draws people to Pamplona every July.

How did the running of the bulls start?

The running of the bulls started as a job: moving the bulls for the afternoon's bullfight from the countryside into the city. For centuries the herd was walked in from outside the walls and hurried through the last streets at dawn into a pen by the ring. Del Campo describes it as "ordinarily a popular spectacle," with young men and riders taking an active part, and the authorities trying to stop them.¹ Once the railway brought bulls to Pamplona in the later 1800s, there was no practical need to drive them through the streets, and the run continued because people wanted it to.⁸ When the city built its permanent bullring, one side wanted a short functional route into the ring and the other wanted the old popular run through the streets; the popular run won, "not without lively opposition."¹

A Short History of the Running of the Bulls

The running of the bulls grew out of a practical job, moving bulls through Pamplona to the bullring, and has kept its route, its hour and its eight mornings for about a century.

Every run since 1903 has its own page in San Fermín by year. The longer stories: how the encierro outlived its job, the women who broke the ban and why the route has not changed.

Who Can Run with the Bulls?

Anyone 18 or over who is sober can run with the bulls in Pamplona; there is no registration, no ticket and no fee, only the City of Pamplona's rules, enforced by the police on the route.⁵ About 2,000 people run on an average morning, more at weekends; the city counted 16,448 runners over the eight runs of 2016, 45 percent of them from abroad.¹⁹ Locals, regulars who come back every year and first-timers from all over the world run side by side. Women make up a small share of runners, about 6 percent by the city's figures.⁹ Where to enter, what to bring and what not to do are in how to run with the bulls; what to wear is in the San Fermín outfit.

Is the Running of the Bulls Dangerous?

Yes. The running of the bulls is dangerous for everyone on the route: runners are gored, trampled and hurt in falls every year, and sixteen people have died in Pamplona's encierro on the city's own list.⁶ The Navarra Health Department counted between 44 and 92 people injured at the runs in each year with a published count from 2019 to 2026, 71 of them in 2026, and about six runners a year suffer horn wounds.¹¹ Doctors and first-aid teams stand behind the fences along the whole route every morning. We never encourage anyone to run. What active runners think about before they do is in our running of the bulls safety guide, and the numbers, year by year, are in our report on running of the bulls injuries and deaths.¹¹

The Bulls

The bulls are Spanish fighting bulls, toros bravos, from a different ranch each morning; the ones that run in Pamplona average about 564 kilograms.¹² They are bred for the bullring, and the six that run in the morning are fought in the bullring that evening; the steers go home to their ranch. A fast run averages about 22 kilometers an hour over the whole route: in 2025 the Miura bulls covered it in 2 minutes 16 seconds.²⁰ Their speed, eyesight, horns and bloodlines are on the Spanish fighting bull.

What Do People Wear to the Running of the Bulls?

Most runners and most of Pamplona wear the San Fermín white: white shirt, white trousers, a red neckerchief, the pañuelo, and often a red sash, the faja. It is a custom, not a rule. Runners add shoes that grip wet stone and leave behind anything loose. The pieces, where to buy them and what runners actually wear are on what to wear to San Fermín.

How to Watch the Running of the Bulls

You can watch from a rented balcony over the route, from the stands of the bullring as the herd comes in, or on Spanish public television, which shows every run live, with replays from many angles straight after. Standing on the route to watch is not allowed. The choices, with what each one shows you, are in how to watch the running of the bulls in person.

Running of the Bulls in Other Places

Bulls run through the streets in many towns of Spain, southern France, Portugal and Mexico, each with its own rules and its own name; Pamplona's is the one most people mean.

Spain

Cuéllar (Segovia) holds what it calls the oldest documented encierros in Spain, with a written ordinance from 1499 and earlier references to an "immemorial custom." It is run at the end of August and the start of September, and it is different from Pamplona's: the bulls are released at dawn about 3 kilometers from town, driven some 5 kilometers through pine woods by a large group of riders, and only then run about 1.5 kilometers through the streets to the bullring.¹³ Dennis has run in Cuéllar.

San Sebastián de los Reyes, just north of Madrid, runs its encierros in the last week of August for the Cristo de los Remedios, seven in the morning and one at night, along calle Real to the bullring. The town traces the tradition to 1525.¹⁴ It is not San Sebastián (Donostia), the Basque city on the coast.

The Mediterranean coast has its own form, the bous al carrer of Valencia and Catalonia, in which bulls are let loose in a square or street rather than run to a ring.

France

In the Camargue and Languedoc, in villages such as Sauve and Sommières, mounted herders called gardians drive bulls through the streets in a tight formation, the abrivado, and back again, the bandido, while young men try to break the formation. The bulls are not killed.¹⁵

Portugal

In Vila Franca de Xira, near Lisbon, the Festas do Colete Encarnado in early July bring bulls through the town's streets in the esperas and largadas de touros.¹⁶

Mexico: Huamantla

Huamantla, in the state of Tlaxcala, has two. The Huamantlada began on August 15, 1954, when local bull fans set out to copy Pamplona with six bulls; it is now held on the last Saturday of the August festivities for the Virgen de la Caridad, with around twenty bulls let loose at once in a circuit of closed streets rather than run to a ring. It is dangerous: in 2026 one man died and nine people were hurt.¹⁷

Huamantla also holds an encierro estilo Pamplona, a Pamplona-style run, in December: six bulls run a fenced route of about 850 meters from the Los Morales building along Zaragoza, Juárez, Morelos and Allende into the La Taurina bullring, starting at 10:00, free, with runners asked to register with an ID and to wear a white shirt and a red neckerchief. The second was held on December 15, 2024.¹⁸ Dennis has run in Huamantla.

Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises and the Running of the Bulls

Ernest Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises, published in October 1926 and titled Fiesta in Britain and in the Spanish language, is the book that made the running of the bulls famous in the English-speaking world.²³²⁶ Hemingway first came to Pamplona on July 6, 1923, with his wife Hadley Richardson, on the advice of Gertrude Stein, his friend and mentor in Paris.²¹²⁵ He wrote about the fiesta for the Toronto Star Weekly that October, and came back for San Fermín nine times in all: every year from 1923 to 1927, then in 1929, 1931, 1953 and 1959, his last.²¹

What happens in The Sun Also Rises?

The Sun Also Rises follows Jake Barnes, an American newspaperman in Paris, and his friends to Pamplona for the fiesta, where they watch the morning runs and the afternoon bullfights.²³ Its first epigraph is Gertrude Stein's remark "You are all a lost generation," and the title comes from its second, a verse of Ecclesiastes.²⁴ In one chapter, a runner from near Tafalla is caught from behind by a bull during the run and dies of the horn wound, and a waiter calls it all "for morning fun."²⁴ It was not invented from nothing: during Hemingway's second San Fermín, in 1924, Esteban Domeño, a 22-year-old from Sangüesa, was fatally gored on Telefónica in the run of July 13, one of the sixteen deaths on the city's list.⁶ The run of that year is on San Fermín 1924.

Did Hemingway run with the bulls?

Whether Hemingway ran with the bulls is still argued over in Pamplona. A well-known photograph is often taken as proof that he did, and his grandson has said that he did not. We set out the evidence in did Hemingway run with the bulls? He also wrote about the fiesta in Death in the Afternoon, his 1932 book on bullfighting.²⁵

How Hemingway changed the running of the bulls

The novel brought English-speaking readers to Pamplona, and many still come because of it, looking for the cafés and streets of the book.²⁵ Mass international travel to San Fermín came decades later, with tourism and cheaper flights, as we trace in how San Fermín went global. The city made Hemingway a part of its own story: it unveiled a monument to him beside the bullring on July 6, 1968, and the Hemingway route through the old town still starts in the Plaza del Castillo, where he and Hadley arrived in 1923.²² The places he stayed and drank are in Hemingway's hotel in Pamplona.

Who Writes This

Encierro is a team of active bull runners in Pamplona. We run every year, we walk first-time runners over the route, and we write down what we know so that anyone thinking of running can decide with their eyes open. We never encourage anyone to run. Start with how to run with the bulls and the safety guide.

Running of the Bulls: Questions and Answers

Words of the Running of the Bulls

Encierro

The running of the bulls: the morning run of the bulls from the corrals to the bullring. From encerrar, to pen.

Entrada

The entrance: Pamplona's older word for bringing the bulls in, still used beside encierro in the early 1900s.

Entzierroa

The encierro, in Basque.

Encierrillo

The night-time transfer of the bulls to the corrals of Santo Domingo, the evening before a run.

Mozo

A bull runner.

Cabestro

A steer that runs with the bulls and leads them.

Pastor

A herder who walks and runs the route with a long stick to keep the bulls moving.

Doblador

One of the people with capes in the bullring who draw the bulls through to the pens.

Toro bravo

The Spanish fighting bull.

Chupinazo

The rocket at noon on July 6 that opens San Fermín.

Huamantlada

The bull run of Huamantla, Mexico, held since 1954.

Abrivado

In the Camargue, bulls driven through the streets by riders on horseback.

Sources

Every fact on this page that does not come from Dennis Clancey's own experience, numbered as it appears in the text.

Update Log

Last updated November 11, 2026. Every change to this page is listed here.

How to Cite This Page

Citations in APA, MLA, Chicago and Wikipedia formats, ready to copy.

Clancey, D. (2026, November 11). The running of the bulls. Encierro.com. https://encierro.com/running-of-the-bulls/

Clancey, Dennis. "The Running of the Bulls." Encierro.com, 11 Nov. 2026, encierro.com/running-of-the-bulls/.

Clancey, Dennis. "The Running of the Bulls." Encierro.com, November 11, 2026. https://encierro.com/running-of-the-bulls/.

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