The Carnival of Skyros

The Carnival of Skyros is an annual pre-Lenten festival held in the lanes of Chora, the main settlement of Skyros in the Sporades, organised by the Municipality of Skyros. The rite is performed on each weekend of the Triodion season: in 2026 this ran from 1 February through to the final Sunday on 22 February, with Clean Monday falling on 23 February. Pascha in 2026 fell on 12 April.

The central figures of the Skyros carnival are the Yeros, the Korela and the Frankos. The Yeros — the old man — wears a thick black goatherd’s cloak over white breeches, with thirty to forty sheep-bells girded at the waist, a weight that can reach fifty kilos, and a mask cut from the hide of a kid, tied so that the animal’s head falls across the chest. The Korela, his partner, dances around him in the white Skyrian dress. The Frankos accompanies the pair in a western jacket and trousers, a figure scholars have linked to mockery of islanders who abandoned traditional dress. Scholars trace the custom to Dionysian rite, interpreting it as a survival of the Bacchic processions on the island where Theseus was said to have died.

The carnival closes on the final Sunday, 22 February, with the Trata staged in the square: a mock boat is carried in and its masked crew turn the year’s events to verse in the Skyrian dialect. Clean Monday fell on the 23rd.