When is FICCI 2027?
FICCI 66 runs 6 to 11 April 2027, six days, confirmed on the festival's own site. The festival was founded in 1960 and is the oldest film festival in Latin America, which locals will tell you within about four minutes of you mentioning it.
We're on Carrera 7 in San Diego, inside the walls. That is the whole point of this page: during FICCI the walled city becomes the venue, the queue, the after-party and the argument about the film afterwards, and the people having the best week are the ones who can walk home.
Where to stay during FICCI
Stay inside the walls if you can, Getsemaní if you can't. April is high season in Cartagena and FICCI stacks on top of it, so the rooms inside the old town go first and they go expensive. Bocagrande is cheaper and it is also a taxi ride away from every late screening, which sounds fine in January and less fine at 11pm on your fourth day.
We have ten rooms. That's not a humblebrag, it's a warning: we sell out for festival weeks and we can't magic up an eleventh. Book direct and breakfast is included, which matters more than you think during a week where lunch happens at 4pm or not at all.
An art hotel, but not the stuffy, silent, white-walls kind. Our rooftop is open till midnight with a pool on it, and Members Only kicks off around 9 on Friday and Saturday. If you want quiet and colonial hush during festival week, we're probably not your spot, and honestly nowhere inside these walls is in April.
How to plan the week
Don't plan the week. Plan the mornings. FICCI publishes its programme close to the dates, screenings shift, and the film everyone tells you to see on Wednesday is not the one you booked on Monday. What you can fix in advance is the boring scaffolding:
- Room: book it before the flight. Six nights covering 6-11 April is the safe span; add the night of the 5th if you're flying in that day, because our check-in is 3pm and an early arrival is free but never guaranteed.
- Airport: Rafael Núñez (CTG) is close to the old town. We run transfers at 120,000 COP for up to four people, 200,000 COP for five or more.
- Checkout day: standard checkout is noon. A late checkout is 100,000 pesos and worth it if you're on a night flight and your last screening ran late.
- Sunday: the festival's last day is Sunday 11 April. Our boozy brunch runs Saturdays and Sundays 11am to 2pm, bottomless, 45 dollars for adults. Book it before you arrive, not the morning of.
What the week is actually like
Hot, loud, and full of people talking about films in three languages at once. April sits at the end of Cartagena's dry stretch, so expect heat rather than rain, and expect the plazas to stay busy until late. Screenings draw a genuine industry crowd alongside people who just live here and go every year, which is the part that makes FICCI worth flying for rather than streaming.
Our corner, San Diego, is the calmer end of the walled city until it isn't. Plaza de San Diego is a block of restaurant tables and a square that fills after dark. During festival week the walk back from a late screening takes twice as long because you keep running into people you met in the queue.
If you're submitting a film
FICCI 66's official call for entries opened on 1 September 2026. The standard deadline was 31 October 2026 and the extended deadline was 29 November 2026, with notifications going out around 14 March 2027. If you're reading this in 2027 with a finished film, you're reading it for FICCI 67, not 66.
The honest version
April is expensive, hot, and busy in Cartagena whether or not there's a festival on. FICCI makes it more of all three. If you're coming for beaches and quiet, come in September and read our rainy-season page instead. If you're coming for the films, come, book early, and accept that you'll sleep badly and enjoy yourself enormously.
Live Cartagena the way we do: rooftop at sunset, screening at 8, and somebody's argument about the closing film finishing on the stairs at 1am.