The MassKara Festival is Bacolod City’s famous festival of smiling masks. It was born in 1980, a hard year for Negros — the sugar industry was in crisis and a sea tragedy had shaken the province — and the city answered with a festival whose name joins mass (many) and cara (face): a multitude of smiling faces, worn as a promise that Bacolod would smile through adversity. It is why Bacolod is called the City of Smiles.
Held every October, MassKara fills Lacson Street and the public plaza with street-dancing competitions — troupes in elaborate smiling masks and feathered costumes dancing to Latin-infused beats — and, after dark, the Electric MassKara, a parade of illuminated floats and glowing costumes that turns the tourism strip into a river of light.
MassKara in photos, 2010–2023
My MassKara coverage spans the Flickr-era festivals of 2010–2013 and a return in 2023 for the street scenes and the Electric MassKara float parade. Click any photo to open the original post.
MassKara closes the October festival season that begins with Angeles City’s Fiestang Kuliat — and its champion troupes have gone on to perform at Manila’s Aliwan Fiesta, the festival of champions.