Grenada Spicemas 2027: Dates, Jab Jab, Fetes and Everything You Need to Know

The long, palm-lined pool at Silversands Grand Anse in Grenada stretching toward the Caribbean Sea under a clear blue sky, with cushioned lounge chairs and shaded cabanas along the water—Limin' Professionals' home base for the Grenada Spicemas 2027 package.

Grenada Spicemas 2027 runs Monday, August 9 and Tuesday, August 10, 2027. Those two days are the finale—but Spicemas is really a festival that unfolds across roughly ten days each August, and the two road days are the least of what you need to understand before you go.

If you only came for the dates, that's them. But the dates are the least useful thing to know, because Spicemas is a different animal from the carnival most travelers picture, and what makes it worth the trip happens in the days around those two.

Here's the whole picture.

When Is Grenada Spicemas 2027?

Spicemas Monday is August 9, 2027. Spicemas Tuesday is August 10, 2027. Those are the two days of the Parade of the Bands, when the mas bands cross the stage and the road fills.

The festival around them runs for about ten days. Soca and calypso competitions, the pageants, the Monarch finals, J'Ouvert and Jab Jab all happen in the stretch leading up to the two road days. Unlike Trinidad Carnival, Spicemas is fixed to August rather than the Lenten calendar, so its dates don't drift earlier or later from year to year the way Trinidad's do.

That August timing is a real practical advantage, and I'll come back to it.

What Spicemas Actually Is

Spicemas is Grenada's national carnival. Like other Caribbean carnivals it has soca, mas bands, fetes and a road march—but it carries a distinct character. It is smaller than Trinidad's, closer to its historical roots, and built around one tradition that has no real equivalent anywhere else: Jab Jab.

If you know Trinidad Carnival, the structure will feel familiar—competitions and fetes building toward two road days—but the scale and the texture are different. We wrote a full guide to that carnival in Trinidad Carnival 2028: Dates, Bands, Fetes and Everything You Need to Know, and the contrast is the point.

Jab Jab—The Heart of Spicemas

Jab Jab is the tradition that defines Grenada's carnival, and it deserves to be understood rather than just photographed. The name comes from the French patois "diable," meaning devil. Participants coat themselves head to toe in used oil, tar, paint, molasses or mud, and take to the streets before dawn wearing horns and dragging chains.

The imagery is deliberate. Jab Jab is an emancipation-era tradition—a masquerade of the enslaved and newly freed, who took the figure the plantation used to frighten them and wore it back, blackened and horned and loud, as an act of defiance and memory. Covering the body in oil and chain turned degradation into power. It is a ritual, not a costume.

For a visitor, that context matters. Jab Jab is participatory and it is intense—the oil gets on everyone, the chains are real, and the crowd moves as one dark mass through the streets in the hours before Monday. It is closer to Trinidad's J'Ouvert than to the feathered "pretty mas" most people associate with carnival, but older and heavier in what it carries. People who go in understanding what they're stepping into tend to describe it as the most powerful thing they've been part of.

The Fetes, the Monarchs and Pretty Mas

Around Jab Jab, Spicemas carries the full carnival calendar.

The fetes are the parties that fill the nights across the festival—all-inclusive events, cooler fetes, boat rides and breakfast parties, the same categories you'd find in Trinidad, on a more intimate scale.

The Monarch competitions crown the season's best in soca and calypso. The Soca Monarch and Calypso Monarch finals are marquee nights, and the calypso tradition in particular runs deep in Grenada.

Pretty Mas and the Parade of the Bands are the feathered, sequined costumes that cross the stage on Monday and Tuesday—the bright counterpart to Jab Jab's darkness, and the image most people picture when they hear "carnival."

The Road March is the soca song that dominates the parade—played most across the bands on the road—and the annual contest to claim it is part of the season's drama.

Getting There

Grenada is more accessible than its size suggests. Maurice Bishop International Airport (GND) receives nonstop flights from Miami, New York, Atlanta, Toronto, London and Frankfurt, so most travelers reach the island without connecting through another Caribbean hub.

The airport sits about three miles from the Grand Anse area on the southwest coast—roughly a ten to fifteen minute drive—so you're not spending your arrival day in transit.

Do You Need a Visa?

For most of our travelers, no. Citizens of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the EU and most Commonwealth and Caribbean countries do not need a visa to visit Grenada. US citizens receive free entry for stays of up to 90 days. Your passport should be valid for at least six months beyond your travel dates. Entry requirements can change, so confirm your specific situation with the Grenada Tourism Authority before you book.

Is Grenada Spicemas Worth It?

Honest answer: it depends on what you want from a carnival.

Spicemas is intimate. You're looking at a few thousand masqueraders, not the hundred-thousand-strong crush of Trinidad. That scale is the whole appeal for some people and a letdown for others. If you want the biggest party in the Caribbean, Trinidad is the biggest party in the Caribbean. If you want to be close enough to the tradition to feel it—to actually understand what Jab Jab is instead of watching it pass by—Grenada gives you that in a way a massive carnival can't.

It's also closer to the emancipation-era roots carnival grew from. Jab Jab isn't a performance staged for visitors; it's a living tradition the island practices for itself. And Spicemas happens in August, which matters more than it sounds. Plenty of people who want to experience a Caribbean carnival simply can't take the time in February for Trinidad. Spicemas is the one that fits a summer calendar.

It is not for everyone. If your idea of a carnival trip is a beach holiday with a parade attached, or if you specifically want Trinidad's scale and its international fete circuit, Spicemas will feel small. Going in wanting what it actually is—older, closer and more concentrated—is the difference between the people who love it and the people who leave puzzled.

What It Costs, and How We Do It

We ran our inaugural Grenada Spicemas experience in 2026, and it sold out. For 2027 we're back with three package options built around SilverSands Grenada, a five-star resort on Grand Anse.

Rest & Revel is the relaxed option with no fetes: accommodation, our cultural island tour, J'Ouvert, and the mas parades. Choose your length, arriving Thursday, August 5 or Friday, August 6 and departing Wednesday, August 11. Short & Spicey is the in-and-out option for limited time off: five nights, Friday, August 6 to Wednesday, August 11, adding three premium fetes to the island tour, J'Ouvert, and the mas parades. Grenada Me Please is the full experience and longest stay: seven nights, Thursday, August 5 to Thursday, August 12, with all five premium fetes, including the Carnival Encore Grenada concert on Wednesday, August 11, plus the island tour, J'Ouvert, and the mas parades.

Both start from US$6,595 per person based on double occupancy, with a deposit from US$1,000 to reserve and the balance due June 15, 2027. The price covers the resort stay, fetes, Jab Jab and J'Ouvert, transfers and on-ground concierge across the festival.

What we provide is a designed trip: the itinerary, the fetes and events secured, the payment plan, private transfers and support on the ground throughout. We charge a service fee for that concierge design—it isn't a booking you could replicate by calling the resort directly, and we're clear about that. Plenty of travelers plan Spicemas themselves and have a wonderful time; if you'd rather not spend the months before August on logistics, that's what the packages are for.

Start Planning

Grenada Spicemas 2027 is Monday, August 9 and Tuesday, August 10. The festival around those days runs most of the first half of August, and the 2026 experience sold out—so if it's the year you go, the time to decide is now.

View Spicemas 2027 Packages