CARTAGENA INTERNATIONAL MUSIC FESTIVAL
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Cartagena is Colombia’s most romantic city and the jewel in its coastal crown, a walled city with a long history that is flooded in orange every evening as the sun sets across the Caribbean.
Located in the UNESCO World Heritage Site Cartagena de Indias, the Cartagena International Music Festival is recognised as one of the foremost international classical music festivals. Drawing from its unique local context, diverse venues, and warm atmosphere, the Festival provides an energetic yet intimate listening experience for a wide variety of orchestral and chamber music.
Cartagena Music Festival X1X
In January 2026, the Cartagena Music Festival celebrates twenty years of artistic excellence and cultural legacy. Since its founding in 2006 by Victor and Julia Salvi, it has transformed the musical landscape of Cartagena and Colombia with world-class programming, the training of young talent, and the promotion of the Colombian repertoire. Recognized as a National Cultural Heritage, the Festival is now a regional benchmark that unites art, education, and sustainability in an exemplary cultural project.
Every year, Cartagena’s International Music Festival pulls in a sophisticated crowd from Colombia and abroad and offers a quintessential experience for anyone who appreciates the beauty found in classical music. Since 2007, the festival has consistently attracted some of the finest classical talents from around the world to Cartagena for some wonderful open-air performances in stunning settings.
Every January, over 20,000 music enthusiasts descend upon the picturesque coastal city of Cartagena for the annual Cartagena International Music Festival (CIMF). Over the course of eight days, renowned musicians from across the globe fill the city’s plazas, churches, and theatres with classical music. It is not just the Caribbean locale and classical music that make this festival special.
Cartagena’s International Music Festival, about to celebrate its 20th anniversary next January, continues to attract the best of the best. Since its first performance in 2007, the festival has sought to strengthen the musical development of Colombia. The CIMF, as previously mentioned, was founded by Italian American harpist Victor Salvi and his wife Julia, a Colombian native and arts devotee, and is dedicated to introducing Colombians, especially young people, to the masterpieces of classical composers.
The Salvi Colombia Foundation, the organizing entity, brings together renowned national and international guest musicians to consolidate its strong identity as a bridge between the music and culture of Europe and the Americas. The visiting musicians are a model for the young Colombian people, showing them how far they can progress. The CIMF’s motto is Music Is For Everyone, which underscores festival week.
The festival also serves as a catalyst for music education and performance throughout the year. Residents of the city’s low-income neighbourhoods can attend free concerts, and there are also master classes for nearly four hundred young artists. Forty students receive music scholarships from the foundation, and approximately one hundred classes are offered to the public year-round. Bogotá’s Monserrate Quartet, featured in the 2009 festival’s Young Talent Program, has subsequently performed at Stanford University.
Not only does the festival make clever use of the Caribbean city’s unique acoustics, but it also has an original approach to its annual theme. Past festivals have focused on the works of Mozart and Bach, The Italian Style in 2013, and Fables in 2014, and the festival approaches each theme from both the Old and New World perspectives, mirroring the history of the colonial city itself. In 2016, the theme was Hacia Tierra Firme (Toward the Mainland) and the festival was a musical voyage, tracing the steps of Christopher Columbus from the late 15th century from Spain to the New World and centuries of cultural integration. The Soul and the Body will be the central theme of the 20th Cartagena Music Festival, taking place from January 4th to 12th, 2026.
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The festival hosts more than forty concerts every year in world-class venues including San Felipe Castle, La Popa hill, the Getsemaní auditorium, and the Adolfo Mejia theatre. Many international guests give free master classes to young Colombian musicians.
Usually, there are three concerts daily, generally, lasting no longer than an hour and a half, so there is plenty of time for sightseeing and dining. Also, it is not all classical – Colombian folk music comes from groups like Ensamble Agile, a trio of bass, Colombian harp, and cuatro, a four-string guitar that really does punch above its weight.
One of the main components of the Cartagena Music Festival is its academic and social programming, which is completed in parallel with the artistic activity with a diploma course, master classes, concerts and lectures, luthier workshops, and many more activities.
These workshops are an opportunity for children, students, professional musicians, and music teachers to be trained in everything from instrument maintenance to bagpipe building, plus exhibitions, conferences, and other educational activities.
Performances take place in a number of old theatres, churches, and in the colourful plazas of the Old City. Concerts are held in the Puerto de Cartagena, Plaza San Pedro, in the flower-decked inner court of the lovely Convento Carro de la Popa, perched up on the highest hill overlooking the port and the old city walls.
Also in the tiered Teatro Adolfo Mejia and in some of the churches of the old barrios outside the historic walled city. An interesting venue is the Chapel of the Sofitel Legend Santa Clara Hotel, where Maria Silva, the heroine of Gabriel García Márquez’s classic novel, was kept prisoner.
It is hard to imagine a more perfect setting for the world’s best in classical music. There is something magical about this city where Gabriel García Márquez set his famous novel Love in the Time of Cholera. Its immaculately restored colonial buildings nestling inside the 16th century walls and linked by narrow bustling streets, mean that this is a music festival like no other.
Besides a range of places to stay, from plush five-star hotels to more humble hostelries, the city is full of museums, such as the Palace of Inquisition, the Maritime Museum, the Gold Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art. San Felipe Castle and San Pedro Claver’s Church, and Monastery are well worth a visit, and of course, Cartagena is full of fabulous bars and restaurants. It is an ideal place to take an evening stroll on the city wall, imagining the ghosts of pirates who besieged it in the past.
One of the most renowned music festivals in South America, it highlights the city’s intersection of cultures by drawing world-class performers, lecturers, and creators who celebrate the city’s modernity in contrast with its historic heritage. There is a heavy emphasis on classical music when attendees can enjoy some of history’s most marvellous masterpieces performed by modern vocalists and instrumentalists around the city.
Ticket Office (WhatsApp): +57 (314) 461 60 02
Contact: +57 (601) 217 99 72
+57 (314) 461 60 02
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