Canela Party returns to Torremolinos from 27 to 29 August with a line-up that makes sense of its entire musical history: guitars, psychedelia, punk, hardcore, oddball pop, off-centre electronics and a collection of bands unlikely to share another summer-festival bill without somebody losing their nerve in the first programming meeting. This is the eighteenth edition: the mayhem has come of age. The first ticket release sold out within hours almost a year ago, and with more than a month to go, half the total allocation has already been sold.
This 2026 edition brings together Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Geordie Greep, Deafheaven, Mannequin Pussy, Melody's Echo Chamber, Nation of Language, Wavves, Basement, Speed, High Vis, Maruja, Baiuca, Rufus T. Firefly, Carolina Durante and Ángeles Toledano, among many others. Said like this, it seems like a list made by someone who spends most of the day diving into Bandcamp, but that's the funny thing: Canela doesn't organize the lineup according to the logic of big festivals, but according to his own taste, recognizable and much finer than what his jokey cape lets on.
There is a clear love for Anglo-Saxon alternative rock, with the United States as its backbone, and it is no coincidence: the festival was the idea in 2007 of the members of a hardcore band, an American genre to the core, and it has not detached itself from that hard DNA in its long history. That's why the harsh electricity of Mannequin Pussy, the blackgaze of Deafheaven, the elastic psychedelia of Unknown Mortal Orchestra, the deranged math-rock of Geordie Greep, the muscle of Speed or the surf rock of Wavves coexist. The British push with High Vis, Maruja, Basement or Man/Woman/Chainsaw, the Portuguese MAQUINA and the Northern Irish Chalk join the international front, and the national bloc enters without complex: Carolina Durante, Baiuca, Rufus T. Firefly, La Paloma, Ángeles Toledano, Amor Líquido, Las Petunias or Cervatana.
The mixture works because Canela has never seemed interested in behaving properly. The bill resembles a miniature Primavera Sound fed through a blender of fairground lights, heat, beach and fancy dress—but the comparison only goes so far. This is the curatorial judgement of a large, discerning festival placed inside a venue where the crowd might be dressed as Heidi while watching a band that, elsewhere, would demand reverent silence, furrowed brows and a €12 craft beer.
Then there is the Gran Pitote, the final-day fancy-dress party: the festival's genetic code. Canela programmes more than bands; it programmes a way of being. Anyone without a costume looks out of place. The sight of Deafheaven unleashing black metal while the crowd dresses as Rubiales or Leticia Sabater neatly explains the organisers' near-perfect one-line slogan: the only festival in the world where the bands come to see the audience.
To understand how it reached this point, go back to 2007, when Canela was a one-day party among friends. Málaga hardcore band The Skirmish Society wanted to play with other groups, dress up and throw confetti. They ended up in Torremolinos because Málaga city considered them too rowdy: they knocked on several town-hall doors, and only the coastal town opened one.
Eighteen years later, Dinosaur Jr., Ty Segall, Viagra Boys and Blonde Redhead have passed through this statistically improbable lineup, and yet they refuse to grow: they do not expand their capacity. When they are applauded for resisting, the organizer himself downplays it with a naturalness strange in these worlds, admitting that he wishes it were out of principle, but they don't sell much more either.
Almost twenty years later, Canela Party remains true to more than its musical roots. It is still the same party among friends it was at the beginning—only now there are 19,000 friends, and some of them are dressed as Chiquito. Fistro. Jarl.
Full line-up: Amor Líquido, Ángeles Toledano, Baiuca, Basement, Carolina Durante, Cervatana, Chalk, Deafheaven, Fuet!, Gazella, Geordie Greep, Getdown Services, High Vis, joseluis, Karen Dió, La Paloma, Las Petunias, Man/Woman/Chainsaw, Mannequin Pussy, MAQUINA, Mala Gestión, Maruja, Me and the Bees, Melody's Echo Chamber, Nation of Language, Rufus T. Firefly, Sandré, Speed, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Upchuck, Wavves and Weird Nightmare.