Every year the town of Carvoeiro hosts their Black and White night party to kick off the summer season for the Algarve. It is a huge event that takes over the entire centro of the town and the beach. Last year over 35k people attended. This year was the 10th anniversary of the event, so I’m sure there were even more!
I had seen info about it last year leading up to the party but there are so many events in the Algarve that it’s hard to go to so many so we pick and choose which sound best or are closest. However, after the event last year, I saw pictures and videos of it and it looked amazing so I decided I wanted to go this year and I dragged my friend Alishia with me.
Carvoeiro is about an hour away from Tavira. It is a small town in the Western Algarve. There are about 3,000 people that live there. It has a stunning beach and coastline. There were a lot of restaurants and bars there and seems to be pretty lively, especially considering that there aren’t that many residents. Many of the bars and restaurants are on the cliff and offer a fantastic view.
Ok, back to the party. The party started at 8:30 pm and was set to last until 3am. We arrived shortly after it started. The streets to the centro are all blocked off but they have parking set up at different locations and offer free bus service to the event. As I said before, the party takes up the whole town. There wer3e decorations and street performers everywhere. There were 7 different stages set up and a full schedule of everything going on. The entertainment included DJ’s playing different genres, a string quartet, a harpist, a fire performance, a magic show, a silent disco, different cultural music performances, and even a black and white movie on an outdoor screen.
We started out with some drinks and walked around to check out what all was going on. We hung out on the beach for a bit while the DJ did a set at sunset. We then headed off to check out the silent disco. If you have never been to a silent disco they are really fun! My friends had never seen them so I promised them they would like it. So for a silent disco, everyone is given headphones and there are different stations or dj’s playing on different channels and you can switch between them as you want. So not everyone is listening to the same song but everyone is happy and dancing along to whatever they are listening to.
We left the silent disco and just walked around for a bit before settling in a good spot to watch the main DJ on the beach. His set was awesome. He had a violinist and a saxophonist playing along with him. They was set up in this 3D octagon cage and there was fire that would shoot out. There was also this massive, glowing moon hanging over the crowd. It was a pretty cool setup, especially for a free event! I am constantly amazed at how great the free celebrations throughout Portugal are, an event like this in the States would definitely not be free to attend.
We watched the DJ for a while and then headed to one of the other stages that had 90’s music. Me and Alishia are around the same age and grew up in the 90’s so we were both all about that! We hung out there for a bit and then figured we should start making our way back. Good thing because we got to the bus area and the line didn’t seem super long but it took us 40 min to get on one. As we were in line, it just kept getting longer and longer. We would have been waiting for forever if we had stayed longer and then we still had to drive an hour back. So yea, that was a long night lol.
The Carvoeiro Black and White party definitely lived up to its expectations. This was the crowd when we left. All the way from the beach to as far back as I could see, just a ton of people,, including us, having the best time, living their best life. Hopefully I can go again next year!
Follow me on insta @vegas.to.portugal for more pics and videos of the party as well as my daily life in Portugal. 💙
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