Fèŝta de ra Bàndes 2026: Cortina Comes Alive with Music and Tradition

Above: the Fèŝta de ra Bàndes, 2024 edition. Photo: Corpo Musicale di Cortina d’Ampezzo, published by kind permission.

For a few days each August, the sound of the Dolomites in Cortina does not come from the woods or from the wind on the ledges. It comes from trumpets, clarinets, trombones, tubas and drums, and it bounces off the façades of Corso Italia as though the mountains were listening.

And on the final Sunday, what comes down the street is not a band. It is a village.

This is the 48th Fèŝta de ra Bàndes. The name is not Italian: it is Ampezzan, the local speech of Cortina d’Ampezzo, and it means roughly «Festival of the Bands». Everyone here uses the original name, so we will too. The organisers — the Corpo Musicale di Cortina d’Ampezzo, the town band — sum the whole thing up in one phrase that has become the festival’s official motto: «l’anima di un paese in festa», the soul of a village celebrating.

The festival is already under way

If you are in Cortina right now, you have not missed it. The opening concert was held on Sunday 23 August at 8.45 pm under the Conchiglia bandstand in Piazza Angelo Dibona, played by the home band. From Monday 24 to Saturday 29, a different guest band has taken that stage every evening at the same hour.

The day everyone waits for is Sunday 30 August: the grand folklore parade along Corso Italia at 2 pm, followed by the Concertone in Piazza Roma, where every band plays together under a single conductor.

The 2026 programme

The official booklet for the 48th edition lists 24 ensembles — bands, folk groups and guest acts; the organisers describe the line-up as «more than 25 bands and groups from Italy and abroad». These are the main dates.

• Sunday 23 August — 8.45 pm, opening concert by the Corpo Musicale di Cortina d’Ampezzo.
• Monday 24 — 8.45 pm, Oalinga Feirschtamusik (Valdaora/Olang, South Tyrol).
• Tuesday 25 — 8.45 pm, Musikkapelle Innichen (San Candido/Innichen, South Tyrol).
• Wednesday 26 — 8.45 pm, Filarmonica di Belluno 1867.
• Thursday 27 — 6 pm, the local drama company Ra Filodramatica d’Anpezo; 8.45 pm, Mujiga San Ciascian (San Cassiano, South Tyrol).
• Friday 28 — 6 pm, the Young Band di Cortina; 8.45 pm, Orchestra Fiati Francesco Venezze – Banda Città di Rovigo.
• Saturday 29 — «Il TOP della Fèŝta de ra Bàndes», twelfth edition: 11 am Böhmische Val Badia, 7 pm Trio Denis Novato (Ljubljana, Slovenia), 8.30 pm Blackout Band (Bolzano).
• Sunday 30 — the big day, detailed below.
• Sunday 6 September — 11 am, a short concert at the Baìta Son Zuogo mountain hut closes the season.

All evening concerts take place at the Conchiglia «Osvaldo Majoni» in Piazza Angelo Dibona. The local portal Cortina Delicious also reports a band concert on Saturday 29 at 12.30 pm on the panoramic terrace of the Rifugio Averau at 2,416 m, reached by chairlift from Passo Giau or on foot from Rifugio Scoiattoli — but this does not appear in the official booklet, so check with the organisers before heading up.

Sunday 30 August: the village walks down Corso Italia

Sunday starts very early. At 8 am the town band walks the length of Corso Italia for the sveglia in musica, the musical wake-up call — arguably the loveliest moment of the whole week, a village still half asleep and a band passing under the windows. At 9.30 am the band plays at Mass in the Basilica Minore.

From 10.45 am Cortina plays on several stages at once: the Banda Gialla from Montefiorino in Piazza Pittori Fratelli Ghedina, the Banda G. Puccini from Cave at the Hotel Royal stage, the Bürgerkapelle Bruneck at the Conchiglia and the Banda Castel Condino e Cimego at the town hall stage, followed at 11.45 by the Rujni Muzikanti from Trieste.

Then, at 2 pm, everything converges on Corso Italia. The grand folklore parade is not a procession of musicians: it is the village lining up. The bands pass with their uniforms and their banners, and with them the folk groups, the associations, the volunteers who built the stages and will take them down again at midnight. Traditional dresses come out of wardrobes where they spend the other 364 days; there are bunches of wild flowers and instruments polished for the occasion.

At 3.30 pm and again at 4.15 pm the flag-throwers of San Gemini perform in Piazza dei Giochi Olimpici and Piazza Pittori Fratelli Ghedina. Through the afternoon come the bands of Caldonazzo, Lagorai, the carnival company of Muggia, the Musega Auta Fascia from Canazei, the Corpo Musicale of Sedico and the Banda da Fodom. At 7.30 pm a closing parade walks the street one last time.

The Concertone: when all the bands become one

At 3.15 pm, in Piazza Roma, the thing happens that gives the rest its point. The bands that have taken turns on stage all week merge into a single ensemble and play together, under one conductor. This is the Concertone — literally, the big concert.

Hundreds of musicians who an hour earlier were each other’s guests become, for the length of a few pieces, one band. People who have stood in that square say the moment the first chord lands is hard to forget — not because the playing is flawless, which with those numbers would be asking a great deal, but because it is happening at all.

Why it is called «the soul of a village celebrating»

The motto is not marketing copy invented for a brochure. It is how the band describes its own festival — and it survives a check against the facts.

Cortina is known worldwide for other pictures: the pistes, the hotels, the shop windows along the corso, the great international events. Those pictures are true, but they show the Cortina that puts itself on display. The Fèŝta de ra Bàndes shows the other one: the Cortina that organises. The village that builds the stages, that puts up visiting musicians in its own homes, that takes a great-grandmother’s dress out of the wardrobe, that sends its children to the Young Band, that is out on the street at eight on a Sunday morning.

It is a machine that runs on associations, volunteers, families and clubs. None of those pieces alone would make a festival. Together they make exactly what the motto says.

The band that started it: Cortina’s Corpo Musicale, founded 1861

The festival has 48 editions behind it; the band that runs it has rather more. The Corpo Musicale di Cortina d’Ampezzo was founded in 1861, when — as its own official history puts it — an already existing small fanfare in Ampezzo was given greater numbers, along with premises, a set of rules and a name. Behind the move were some thirty enthusiasts led by Andrea Constantini, known as «Dea Zima», a primary school teacher and organist who also founded a music school.

What follows reads a lot like the history of the village itself. In 1883 the band travelled to Vienna for a great folklore gathering. In 1909 it went to Innsbruck for the Andreas Hofer celebrations and was judged joint best group among 167 ensembles. The First World War dissolved it completely — the conductor left, and so did the players — and it was not reconstituted until 1919.

Today it numbers 62 musicians and plays roughly 150 engagements a year: church services, civic ceremonies, sporting occasions. For its 150th anniversary in 2011 the Dutch composer Jacob de Haan wrote a piece for it, Queen of the Dolomites.

Osvaldo Majoni, the man who invented the festival

One name holds together most of what you will see on Corso Italia. Osvaldo Majoni, known as «Boto» (1944–2023), was president of the Corpo Musicale for over thirty years from the late 1970s, and a member for sixty.

It was Majoni who, with conductor Renato Sartor, had the band swap its uniform for the traditional Ampezzan dress, copied from mid-eighteenth-century models. And it was in those same years that the Fèŝta de ra Bàndes began — «un po’ in sordina», quietly, says the official history, before becoming «the village’s biggest festival». Majoni was also among those who pushed for the Conchiglia.

What they are wearing is not a dirndl

Visitors watching the parade tend to file everything under one heading: Tyrolean costume, dirndl. It is a mistake, and in Ampezzo people notice.

Cortina has its own dress tradition, documented by the Ethnographic Museum of the Regole d’Ampezzo, with its own names in the local language. The ciameşòto is the gathered skirt of heavy black cloth sewn to a sleeveless bodice; the palegrèn is the coloured silk apron. Each variant has its name and its occasion: ra magnes is the ceremonial dress, with a black jacket whose gathered sleeves are trimmed with satin; ra varnaza is for spring and summer, ra jàida for winter; and a ra vecia is the oldest of all, dating from the end of the eighteenth century.

The museum adds an observation worth repeating: these clothes show «an Alpine community attached to tradition, but also open to the influences of city fashion». The ostrich feathers and hand-embroidered tulle of the ceremonial dress come straight from early twentieth-century urban fashion. This is not a costume frozen in time — it is a garment that kept living. And, as the Union de i Ladis de Anpezo points out, many Ampezzan women still wear it.

A note on the name — and on finding it online

Fèŝta de ra Bàndes is Ampezzan, the local speech of the valley, and translates roughly as «Festival of the Bands». The original keeps its own definite article, ra, which Italian does not have.

One practical warning if you are searching for it: the spelling varies, even in official sources. The 2026 booklet writes Fèŝta de ra Bàndes, with accents and the ŝ; the band’s own website menu writes Fešta de ra Bandes; tourist portals usually write Festa de ra Bandes, with no diacritics at all. They are the same festival.

If you are anywhere near Cortina on Sunday

Corso Italia at 2 pm, then Piazza Roma at 3.15. No ticket, no booking, and no need to know anything about band music.

All you have to do is be there when they pass — because this is one of those things a photograph does not convey. The volume of a band going by three metres away, in a narrow street between houses, is a physical experience before it is a musical one. By the twentieth band you understand why Cortina waits all year for this week.

Sources

• Corpo Musicale di Cortina d’Ampezzo — official festival page, the 48th-edition booklet, the History section and the events calendar. Main source for the programme, times, venues, line-up and the band’s history.
• DMO Dolomiti Bellunesi — event page, for the full season dates and the 6 September closing concert.
• Ethnographic Museum of the Regole d’Ampezzo — «Eleganza senza tempo», for the names and history of the traditional Ampezzan dress.
• Union de i Ladis de Anpezo (ULDA) — Traditions section, on the Ampezzan costume.
• Voci di Cortina — for the 2024 rebuilding of the Conchiglia and for Osvaldo Majoni.
• Cortina Delicious — for the Rifugio Averau concert, which does not appear in the official booklet.