Philippine Festivals Trivia
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49 free Philippine Festivals trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
The Philippines runs on fiestas. Cebu's Sinulog drew more than five million people in 2026, Kalibo's Ati-Atihan calls itself the Mother of All Philippine Festivals, Bacolod dances in smiling masks, Lucban hangs rice wafers from its houses and San Fernando builds 15-foot Christmas lanterns. This quiz covers the great Santo Niño festivals of January, the flower, harvest and mask festivals of the provinces, Holy Week's Moriones, the Black Nazarene traslación, Flores de Mayo and the Santacruzan, Simbang Gabi and the world's longest Christmas season, plus the dates, dances, saints and origin stories behind each one. About a third of the questions are easy for anyone who has joined a fiesta, a third are medium and the rest are for culture buffs. Every answer is checked against reference pages on each festival.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which farm animals are made to kneel before the church at Pulilan's famous May festival?
Carabaos
Carabaos, the water buffalo that plow the country's rice fields, are groomed, decorated and paraded through the Bulacan town, then kneel in homage to San Isidro Labrador, patron saint of farmers.
Q 02On which day is Sinulog held each year?
Third Sunday of January
Third Sunday of January is the feast of the Santo Niño on the Philippine church calendar, so a week of processions and street dancing builds to the grand parade on that day.
Q 03The word Sinulog comes from a Cebuano word for what?
Water current
Water current is what sulog means in Cebuano, and the dancers' forward-and-back steps, kept to the beat of drums, are said to mimic the flow of a river in Cebu.
Q 04Tacloban's Pintados Festival honors ancient Visayan warriors famous for covering their bodies in what?
Tattoos
Tattoos earned the Visayans the Spanish name Pintados, 'the painted ones'; a full set was a mark of bravery, and paraders now recall it in colorful body paint.
Q 05The Santo Niño de Cebú was a 1521 baptismal gift to Cebu's queen from which explorer?
Ferdinand Magellan
Ferdinand Magellan gave the image days before he was killed at Mactan; 44 years later a member of another Spanish expedition found it in a wooden box amid the town's burned huts.
Q 06Who danced the first Sinulog parade, staged by a sports and youth director?
Students
Students were dressed up and taught a prayer dance that until then was performed at the Santo Niño church; organizer David Odilao wanted it brought outside for everyone to see.
Q 07Which Christian name did Cebu's queen, portrayed by Sinulog dancers holding the Santo Niño, take at her 1521 baptism?
Juana
Juana was the name she was given in honor of the mother of Spain's King Charles, while her husband, Rajah Humabon, was christened Carlos after the king himself.
Q 08What does Balayan, Batangas, dress in costumes and parade every June 24?
Roasted pigs
Roasted pigs, the lechon of every Filipino feast, are paraded while onlookers douse the marchers with water; the custom grew from families showing off a lechon in thanks to St. John the Baptist.
Q 09Where is the Ati-Atihan, called the Mother of All Philippine Festivals, held?
Kalibo
Kalibo's festival earned the title by inspiring others: the Dinagyang began in the 1960s after a parish priest who had watched the Ati-Atihan brought the devotion home.
Q 10What does the name Ati-Atihan mean?
To imitate the Ati people
To imitate the Ati people, the dark-skinned indigenous people of Panay, revelers smear their faces and bodies with black soot before dancing through the streets.
Q 11In the legend behind the Ati-Atihan, ten chieftains sailed to Panay from which island?
Borneo
Borneo was home to the legend's ten datus, who bought Panay's lowlands from the Ati for a golden hat; when a bad harvest struck, the settlers shared their food and the Ati danced in thanks.
Q 12What is the street dancing at the heart of the Ati-Atihan festival called?
Sadsad
Sadsad sends revelers dancing through town behind pounding drums, to shouts of 'Hala Bira!'
Q 13In which city is the Dinagyang Festival held every January?
Iloilo
Iloilo began its feast in 1968, when a replica of the Santo Niño arrived from Cebu, and called it the Iloilo Ati-atihan until a name of its own was coined in 1977.
Q 21Panagbenga street dances draw on the Bendian, a celebration dance of which people?
Ibaloi
Ibaloi people of Benguet, the province around the festival's host city, dance the Bendian as a whole community, circling together in celebration.
Q 22The Pahiyas Festival, where houses are decorated with produce, is held in which Quezon town?
Lucban
Lucban families dress their house fronts with fruit, vegetables and grain every May 15 to thank San Isidro Labrador, the patron saint of farmers, for a good harvest.
Q 23What is kiping, the colorful decoration that covers Pahiyas houses?
A rice-made wafer
A rice-made wafer, kiping is molded on real leaves, dyed in bright colors and strung into chandeliers called arangya; once the fiesta is over it can be grilled or fried and eaten like chips.
Q 14What is the Dinagyang's main event, with drummers and dancers in feathered warrior costumes?
Ati Tribes Competition
Ati Tribes Competition entrants are tribes in name only: many are troupes fielded by local high schools, dancing in warrior dress to thundering drums.
Q 15Which city, nicknamed the City of Smiles, holds the MassKara Festival every October?
Bacolod
Bacolod first staged it in 1980 to liven up its October charter-day celebration in a gloomy year, and dancers in grinning masks now fill its streets each October.
Q 16MassKara joins the English word 'mass', for a crowd, to the Spanish word 'cara', which means what?
Face
Face is what cara means, so artist Ely Santiago's coinage reads as 'a multitude of faces', and it doubles as a pun on maskara, the Filipino word for mask.
Q 17MassKara began in 1980 amid a market crash for which crop?
Sugar
Sugar was almost the only livelihood Negros Occidental had, and its buyers abroad were switching to cheaper sweeteners such as corn syrup.
Q 18Which tragedy struck Negrense families in April 1980, months before the first MassKara?
The sinking of the MV Don Juan
The sinking of the MV Don Juan, a liner bound home from Manila that collided with an oil tanker, plunged the province into mourning, and the festival of smiling masks was conceived that year to lift its spirits.
Q 19The Panagbenga Festival fills which city with flower floats every February?
Baguio
Baguio launched the festival in the mid-1990s to restore hope and revive tourism after the 1990 earthquake, which had left the mountain city among the hardest hit.
Q 20What does the Kankanaey word Panagbenga mean?
Season of blooming
Curator Ike Picpican suggested the name after the first Baguio Flower Festival in 1996.
Q 24Davao's Kadayawan Festival was once named after Mount Apo, the durian and which flower?
Waling-waling
Waling-waling gave the old name, Apo Duwaling, its ending; the orchid comes from Mindanao's forests, where collectors have made it rare in the wild even as Davao's growers keep it alive in cultivation.
Q 25What is the street-dancing highlight of Davao's August festival called?
Indak-Indak sa Kadayawan
Indak-Indak sa Kadayawan sends troupes from Davao and beyond to dance through the streets in tribute to the traditions of the region's indigenous peoples; Pamulak is the festival's parade of flower floats.
Q 26Masked Roman soldiers roam which island during the Holy Week Moriones Festival?
Marinduque
Marinduque's penitents take their name from the morion, the crested helmet of the 16th-century Spanish soldier, which local tradition recast as the headgear of the Romans who tormented Christ.
Q 27Which one-eyed Roman are the masked Moriones searching for all week?
Longinus
Longinus, legend says, regained the sight of his blind eye when blood from the side he speared splashed it; he turned Christian, and the week ends with the masked soldiers catching and beheading him.
Q 28Giant papier-mâché puppets parade through which Rizal town each November?
Angono
Angono folklore says peasants built the first giant to look like a hated landlord and paraded it in scorn; it was the town's own National Artist, painter Carlos 'Botong' Francisco, who later pushed to make the figures a thing of cheer.
Q 29San Clemente, the pope whose feast the Higantes Festival's giants celebrate, is honored there as the patron of whom?
Fishermen
Fishermen and mariners claim him because legend has Pope Clement I tied to an anchor and cast into the sea, and an anchor is still his emblem in church art.
Q 30Which city's Giant Lantern Festival made it the Christmas Capital of the Philippines?
San Fernando, Pampanga
San Fernando, Pampanga calls its contest Ligligan Parul; it grew out of lubenas, the candlelit lantern processions that the province's parishes still hold on the nights before Christmas.