La Tomatina 2026 draws thousands for tomato fight in Buñol
Thousands joined Spain’s La Tomatina 2026, throwing about 150,000 kilograms of tomatoes during the hour-long festival.
By Daniel Okafor · Business Editor
2 min read
La Tomatina 2026 brought thousands of people to Buñol, Spain, on August 26 for an hour-long tomato fight that used about 150,000 kilograms of tomatoes. Participants threw tomatoes at one another and were left covered in pulp, Al Jazeera reported.
The annual event is known as La Tomatina, a festival in which crowds gather to throw tomatoes in the streets of the small town near Valencia. Accounts of the tradition trace its beginnings to 1945, according to Al Jazeera.
What is La Tomatina and how does the tomato fight work?
La Tomatina is a yearly public tomato-throwing event held in Buñol. The central fight runs for about one hour, after trucks bring in tomatoes for participants, according to Associated Press reporting published by PBS and Smithsonian magazine's account of the 2025 festival.
Safety guidance has been a feature of the event. Organizers asked people at the 2025 gathering to crush tomatoes before throwing them, reducing the force of impact and the risk of injury, Smithsonian reported. Associated Press also reported that some participants wore goggles and earplugs.
The event’s reported scale varies by year. Associated Press estimated that roughly 20,000 people took part in the 2025 festival and said they threw 120 tons of overripe tomatoes. Those figures apply to 2025, while Al Jazeera reported approximately 150,000 kilograms of tomatoes for the 2026 event.
Officials introduced ticketing and capped participation at about 20,000 after 2013 to make the event more manageable for Buñol, Smithsonian reported. The town had previously drawn crowds as large as 40,000, the magazine said.
La Tomatina’s early history also includes interruptions. Smithsonian, citing Associated Press reporting, said the festival was banned in the early 1950s under Francisco Franco and was reinstated in 1957 after local protests. It has since become an annual event, apart from two years when it was paused during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Questions about food waste have followed the festival. Organizers told the Associated Press that the tomatoes used in the event did not meet quality standards for human consumption and would otherwise be discarded. That assertion is the organizers’ position and was not independently verified in the reports.
This story draws on original reporting from Al Jazeera.