Venice Carnival 2027: Dates, Costs, and When to Go

Search for Venice Carnival dates and you will get three different answers. One site says late January, another says the first week of February, a third confidently offers a range in the middle of the month. They cannot all be right, and the disagreement matters, because Carnival is the one week of the Venetian year when a bed costs triple and a wrong guess wastes a trip.

The dates are actually fixed by arithmetic, not opinion. Carnival always ends on Martedì Grasso, the day before Ash Wednesday, which is pinned to Easter. Easter 2027 falls on 28 March, which puts Ash Wednesday on 10 February and Martedì Grasso on Tuesday 9 February 2027. Working back from there, the official Carnevale di Venezia programme runs the 2027 edition from Saturday 23 January to Tuesday 9 February.

That settles when. The more useful questions are what any of it costs, and which of those eighteen days you actually want to be there for — because the opening weekend and the closing weekend are, in practice, two completely different festivals.

When is Venice Carnival 2027?

23 January to 9 February 2027.

Carnival moves every year because it is tethered to Easter, not to a calendar date. The festival closes on Martedì Grasso, the last day before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, so the whole thing slides by up to a month depending on where Easter lands.

For 2027, the chain runs: Easter Sunday 28 March, Ash Wednesday 10 February, Martedì Grasso 9 February. Giovedì Grasso, the traditional start of the final heavy stretch, falls on Thursday 4 February.

Date (2027)	What it is
Sat 23 January	Carnival opens; quietest phase begins
Sat 30 – Sun 31 January	First full weekend, noticeably busier
Thu 4 February	Giovedì Grasso, start of the final stretch
Fri 5 – Sun 7 February	Peak weekend, the heaviest crowds of the year
Tue 9 February	Martedì Grasso, closing day
Wed 10 February	Ash Wednesday; Venice empties overnight

If you see dates published elsewhere that end on anything other than 9 February 2027, they are wrong, and you can check the claim yourself against any Easter calendar.

Is Venice Carnival free?

Mostly, yes — and this surprises people who assume a festival this famous must be ticketed.

The things Carnival is known for are free to witness. The costumed figures who pose in Piazza San Marco for hours are private individuals in their own outfits, not a paid attraction. The programme of events in the piazza, the parades, the water processions along the Cannaregio canal, and the Volo dell'Angelo — when a costumed figure descends on a wire from the Campanile into the square — are public and cost nothing to watch.

What does cost money:

• The balls. The historic private balls in palazzi on the Grand Canal are the genuinely expensive end of Carnival, running from a few hundred euros to well over a thousand per person, usually including dinner and costume hire. This is a real experience, not a tourist trap, but it is a discretionary luxury rather than the price of admission.
• Seated or ticketed event access, where specific shows use a fenced arena with limited places.
• Costume hire, if you want one, which is a separate market with its own price ladder.

And then there is the cost that dominates everyone's budget and that nobody advertises: a room. Carnival is the highest-demand fortnight of the Venetian calendar, and hotel rates over the closing weekend routinely run two to three times their January baseline. If you are pricing a Carnival trip, price the bed first and treat everything else as rounding. The Italy travel budget covers what a normal Venice day costs, so you can see the multiple clearly.

Do you have to pay Venice's access fee during Carnival?

No. This trips up a lot of people, and a surprising number of Carnival guides imply otherwise.

Venice's access fee — the contributo di accesso for day-trippers entering the historic centre — applies only on a defined list of peak days. In 2026 that list ran from 3 April to 26 July, about 60 days, concentrated on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays (Rick Steves' Europe). The city runs the scheme through its own access fee portal at Venezia Unica. January and February are not in the window at all, so Carnival falls entirely outside the charged calendar.

For completeness, when the fee does apply: it costs €5 if you register more than four days ahead and €10 closer to the date, per person per day. Overnight guests in registered accommodation, children under 14, and disabled visitors are exempt from paying, though during the charged period they are still asked to register and hold a QR code.

The city publishes its calendar year by year, so if you are travelling well beyond 2027, confirm the dates for your year rather than assuming the window stays put. But as things stand, a Carnival trip involves no entry fee.

Choosing which days to go

This is the decision that shapes the trip, and it comes down to how much of a crowd you are willing to trade for atmosphere.

The opening stretch (23 January to roughly 1 February) is Carnival at its most liveable. Costumed figures are already out, the piazza has a programme running, and you can cross the city in a normal amount of time. Accommodation is dramatically cheaper than the closing weekend. The trade-off is that the headline set-pieces are back-loaded, so the biggest moments are still ahead of you.

The closing stretch (Giovedì Grasso on 4 February through Martedì Grasso on 9 February) is the festival everyone pictures. It is also genuinely difficult. Piazza San Marco reaches a density where the authorities manage pedestrian flow, and on the heaviest days arriving late can mean not getting into the square at all. Bridges become one-directional bottlenecks. A journey that takes fifteen minutes in October can take an hour.

The weekdays in between are the compromise most people should take: enough momentum that the city feels like it is in festival, without the closing weekend's crush or its room rates.

One practical point that applies to the whole period. Winter in Venice brings acqua alta, the periodic high tides that flood low-lying areas including St Mark's Square. It is not a disaster, it is a scheduled inconvenience with published forecasts: the Comune di Venezia runs a tide forecasting centre staffed around the clock. Bring boots you do not mind soaking and check the tide tables rather than being surprised by them.

Do you need a costume?

No. Nobody will stop you, look at you oddly, or refuse you entry anywhere for wearing a coat.

That said, there is a spectrum. Plenty of visitors buy a mask and leave it at that, which reads as perfectly appropriate. Full costume hire is widely available in the city and runs from modest to extravagant, typically priced per day, and is genuinely fun if you intend to spend a morning being photographed in the piazza — which is the actual activity, since the elaborately costumed figures are there precisely to pose.

If you are buying a mask, it is worth knowing what you are looking at. Traditional Venetian masks are papier-mâché, hand-finished, and made by a shrinking number of workshops in the city. The cheap moulded plastic versions sold by the rack near the main tourist arteries are a different product entirely. Both are fine to buy; just don't pay artisan prices for the stamped one.

Where to stand, and where to stay

Piazza San Marco is the centre of the programme and therefore the hardest place to be. If your priority is seeing the set-piece events, you need to be there well before the advertised start, especially on the closing weekend. If your priority is enjoying yourself, the costumed crowds spread far beyond the piazza and the quieter sestieri offer the same spectacle at a fraction of the density.

Cannaregio and Dorsoduro are the usual answers for both staying and wandering — close enough to walk into the action, far enough to escape it. Navigating Venice matters more than usual during Carnival, when the obvious routes are the congested ones and the useful skill is knowing the parallel ones. A vaporetto pass is also worth more in Carnival week than at any other time, since walking the Grand Canal corridor becomes slow; vaporetto passes covers which duration actually pays off.

Staying on the mainland in Mestre is the standard cost-saving move and it genuinely works on price, but Carnival is the one time of year when it hurts most: the best of the festival happens in the evening, and the late trains back are crowded and slow. If there is a trip to splash out on a room in the historic centre for, this is it.

For everything outside Carnival, the Venice travel guide covers the city's year-round shape, and best time to visit Italy sets February against the rest of the calendar. If you want a quieter counterpoint in the same region, a day trip to Verona is an easy escape from the crowds.

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