Know Before You Go: Barbados Food & Rum Festival

If you’re looking for the party of your lifetime, look no further than the annual Barbados Food & Rum Festival. I attended the fest down on the super fun Caribbean island in 2023, and it lives up to one of the most fun weeks of my life. I learned Bajans really know how to party, and better yet, how to throw a party. If you’re interested in attending, here’s everything you need to know before you go.

What is the Barbados Food & Rum Festival?

Voted the Caribbean’s Best Culinary Festival by World Culinary Awards in 2023, the Barbados Food & Rum Festival is exactly what it appears to be: a weekend full of eating and drinking on the sunny island of Barbados. Barbados is the known as the culinary capital of the Caribbean, with local dishes like flying fish, cutters, and even my personal favorite fast-food chain on the planet (Chefette!), and is also the birthplace of rum, so it only makes sense for the island to host such an impeccable and outstanding annual food festival. The festival was founded in 2009 and highlights some of the top culinary voices in the game, with frequent appearances by Food Network stars (I met Anne Burrell while wearing a sequin jacket, and she told me I looked like a disco ball!), and also paves the way for future generations of chefs.

When is the festival?

The festival is typically held during the third week of October. Check their website for accurate dates as it changes each year.

Events held

There are plenty of events held throughout the weekend of the annual Barbados Food & Rum Festival, and it will vary by year. Common events held are a junior chef competition, a “rum route” which is basically distillery-hopping, Rise & Rum (a.k.a. a party that starts prior to the sunrising–usually around 4 a.m.), and a liquid gold feast, which is a black-tie event where you can try tons of food. My personal most memorable event was the Rise & Rum–I am not going to lie; I was a little miserable waking up at 3 a.m., and being handed a rum cocktail at 4 a.m. felt wrong in every sense of the word, but holy smokes, this is a FUN party, and there’s truly nothing like it in the world. I sipped rum cocktails and ate plenty of good food with tons of people for an all-morning party as we watched the sunrise on the sandy beach of Barbados. A live band came on around 7 a.m. and next thing I knew, I was doing rum shots at 8 o’clock in the morning!

• Fashion tip: The Rise & Rum Festival has a dress code of yellow. Check out some cute yellow dresses here!
• Fashion tip #2: The Liquid Gold event has a black-tie dress code. Why not wear something black and gold?

Cost of entry (and how to get there)

To get to Barbados from pretty much anywhere in the world, you’ll need to fly into Bridgetown (BGI). As far as cost, there’s not one set cost for the festival, and instead, you buy individual tickets for each event. You can see a full list of the upcoming events, along with their prices, here.

Where to stay

Here are some good options all around the island for all budgets:

• $: Palm Garden Hotel, Radisson Aquatica Resort, Maxwell Del Mar Hotel
• $$: Hilton Barbados Resort, The Crane Resort, Crystal Cove (all-inclusive)
• $$$: Sugar Bay Barbados (all-inclusive), Sandals Barbados (all-inclusive), O2 Beach Club (all-inclusive)

What else to do in Barbados

If you’re all the way down in Barbados, you’ll want to see other parts of the island, too! Check out my post about 10 things to do in Barbados. Otherwise, check out one of these tours:

• Catamaran and snorkeling tour
• Island tour with flower cave and lunch
• Bridgetown walking and history tour
• Rum distillery tour
• Harrison’s Cave tour

DISCLAIMER: I might make a small commission from some of the links throughout this article, but the price is the same for you. This helps keep my business running so I can continue to provide free travel tips!

DISCLAIMER II: Visit Barbados hosted me for one week in Barbados.