Iberian Festival Awards 2027 in A Coruña: deadlines, prices and categories for entering a festival

The awards that compare festivals in Spain and Portugal every year will be presented in Galicia. On Saturday 13 March 2027, A Coruña hosts the eleventh edition of the Iberian Festival Awards, at the Palacio de la Ópera, and entries are still open: the rate of €52 per entry applies until 31 October. Festivals, promoters, brands, agencies and service providers can compete for what they did during 2026.

ModoFestival is a media partner of the Iberian Festival Awards.

What the Iberian Festival Awards are

They have been organised since 2016 by APORFEST, the Portuguese association of music festivals, as part of the European Festival Awards network. The gala alternates between the two countries and has been held in seven cities over ten editions: Lisboa, Barcelona, Vigo, Maia, Granada, Almancil and Ponta Delgada, in the Azores, where the most recent one took place on 14 March 2026.

Each category awards an Iberian prize and a national one. In the 2026 list of winners, when the Iberian award went to a Spanish entry, the national one went to a Portuguese entry, and vice versa. If a category receives few entries from one of the two countries, the rules provide for a single winner.

How to enter a festival and how much it costs

Entries are submitted using a form on the Iberian Festival Awards website, preferably in English, and can only be submitted by the event organiser or by an organisation that took part in it with their authorisation. Each category allows up to three supporting links, such as news stories, social media posts or folders with photos and videos, and the organisers take between one and ten working days to validate it.

• First phase, now closed: €47, until 31 August.
• Second phase, until 31 October: €52.
• Third phase, from 1 to 27 November: €58.
• APORFEST members whose membership is valid on the date of the gala: free, with one entry in the professional category and no limit in the company category.

Payment is made when the entry is submitted and is not refunded if the entrant changes their mind or disagrees with the evaluation. In return, the entry includes two tickets to the gala, with the reception, the afterparty and the open bar, access until June 2027 to the organisers' database of Iberian festivals, and a year of promotion on their social media, on their marketplace and in the Iberian Festivals Guide.

There is a cap of 350 entries and the organisers say that 43% has already been reached. Anyone who has made up their mind pays six euros less if they submit before the end of October.

The 25 categories and who decides each one

The public votes on 15 categories via SurveyMonkey, with one vote per device, and a jury of up to 100 professionals from Portugal, Spain and other countries decides the other ten. The organisers require jury members to have at least five years of experience and not to evaluate organisations with which they have had a professional relationship.

Voted on by the public

• By size: Best Major Festival (more than 10,000 people a day), Best Medium-Sized Festival (from 2,500 to 10,000), Best Small Festival (from 1,000 to 2,500) and Best Micro Festival (up to 1,000), all for festivals where music is the focus.
• By format: Best New Festival, for those that held their first edition in 2026; Best Indoor Festival, in clubs and enclosed spaces; Best Academic & Youth Festival, for university, children's, youth or family events; Best Arts & Culture Festival, for festivals whose focus is not music; Best Festivity, for local festivities where music is the main attraction; and Best PRO Event, for industry gatherings.
• Performances: Best Live Performance, with one award for national bands and another for international ones, and Best Live Electronic Act, for DJs.
• Imagery: Best Festival Photo and Best Video Coverage, for photographers and videographers who work at festivals.

Decided by the jury

• Management and audience experience: Best Touristic Promotion, Best Cultural Programme, Best Communication & Marketing Strategy, Best Hosting and Reception and The Event Safety Award.
• Social impact: Contribution to Sustainability and Contribution to Equality, Accessibility & Inclusion.
• Companies and venues: Best Service Provider, Best Brand Experience and Best Venue.

Separately, there are the two Excellence Awards, for the personality and the organisation of the year, which APORFEST grants by direct nomination after consulting its members and the jury.

What changes in 2027

The change that most affects small festivals concerns the audience thresholds. In 2026, Best Small Festival covered all festivals with fewer than 1,500 people a day and Best Medium-Sized started there. Now those with up to 1,000 have their own category, Best Micro Festival, and the medium-sized category starts at 2,500: a festival with 2,000 people a day, which competed as medium-sized last year, now competes as small.

Three categories change their names: Best Brand Activation becomes Best Brand Experience; Best Non-Music Festival becomes Best Arts & Culture Festival; and Contribution to Equality adds accessibility and inclusion. The Innovation Award has been dropped, and the organisers have renewed the jury and the formula used to evaluate its categories. A Hall of Fame is also being introduced: anyone who wins the same category three years in a row enters it and cannot compete in that category the following year. The rule takes into account results from the 2026 edition onwards.

Timeline: from the nominees to the gala

• 27 November: entries close.
• December: the jury is presented.
• 10 December: nominees announced and public voting opens.
• 17 January: public voting closes.
• 21 January: finalists, the top ten in each category.
• February: gala line-up, with the bands and DJs, and practical information.
• 13 March: gala and awards ceremony.

The winners are revealed at the gala itself, except for the two Excellence Awards, which are announced beforehand. For the line-up announcement, the rules and the official website do not match: the former gives 17 February and the latter the 12th.

What the gala at the Palacio de la Ópera in A Coruña will be like

The ceremony takes place in the Auditorio Cámara of the Palacio de la Ópera, a hall with a minimum capacity of 345 people plus five spaces for people with reduced mobility. Doors open at 19:30, the gala runs from 21:30 to 00:00 and the afterparty continues until 02:00 at a location yet to be announced. The Hall de Cámara will host the reception and brand activations, and the Sala Tonal will serve as the dressing room.

There will be a red carpet, an open bar and three live bands, playing two songs each; one of them will be Galician. At the 2026 gala, Portuguese acts NAPA and SOLO9VIOLA and Madrid band Aiko el Grupo played, and Toledo DJ Bita was on the decks.

It is not an event open to the general public: entry is only possible with an entry submission or a professional pass. The organisers have not yet decided which areas of the venue will be open to the public and which will be reserved for the industry, nor have they confirmed which local institutions and sponsors will support this edition.

There will be a networking dinner the evening before, and the daytime programme includes live podcast recordings and the third Iberian Futsal Cup, a five-a-side football tournament. According to the rules, the tournament is booked separately from the ticket, as are transfers from the airport or hotel. The presenters and the official hotel will be announced later.

The Spanish festivals that won in 2026

At the Ponta Delgada gala, held at the Coliseu Micaelense, the most awarded Spanish festival was SonRías Baixas, from Bueu: it won the Iberian awards for Best Hosting and Reception and Contribution to Sustainability, and Javier Bragado won the national award for Best Festival Photo for his work at the festival.

BIGSOUND Pontevedra won the Iberian award for Best New Festival in its first year, and Arde Bogotá's concert at Sonorama Ribera won the Iberian award for best performance by a national band. Spanish winners also included Bilbao BBK Live, Iberian winner of Best Major Festival, Jean-Michel Jarre's concert at Icónica Santalucía Sevilla Fest, best electronic performance, and O Son do Camiño, with the national video award. The organisation of the year was Tremor, the festival on the Azorean island of São Miguel.

Galicia, which has already hosted the gala in Vigo, had 2026 winners such as SonRías Baixas, BIGSOUND Pontevedra and O Son do Camiño. If you are travelling to A Coruña that weekend, the A Coruña festival listings cover what is on in the city: on the same day, Saturday 13 March, ExpoCoruña hosts ExpoRock Festival, with Los Enemigos and Lendakaris Muertos on the line-up.

Sources: APORFEST (information sent to ModoFestival on 21 October 2026, entry rules for the 11th edition and press release announcing A Coruña); official Iberian Festival Awards website on Talkfest (call for entries, timeline, winners and live bands from 2026); rules for the 2026 edition, for the previous audience thresholds.