Feature films
The full-length film section, the heart of the festival's official competition.
The festival
Over 60 years of cinema
have their celebration
The Almería Western Film Festival was born in 2011 with a clear mission: to honour the cinematic legacy of more than 60 years of filmmaking in Tabernas and its district. Here, among dry riverbeds and badlands, western towns were built and films were shot that travelled the world; the festival is the village's way of remembering it — and of continuing to write it.
For a few days each October, Tabernas lives and breathes cinema: screenings, professional encounters, tributes, concerts and all manner of activities fill the streets and venues. Visitors cross the square between western posters, and it is not unusual for the sunset over the desert to feel like one more frame on the programme.
The festival has grown edition after edition: the 2025 edition, the fifteenth, brought together more than 7,000 participants around 42 films from 18 countries. The next date, the sixteenth, is already set: 8 to 12 October 2026.
2011
first edition of the festival
42
films from 18 countries (2025 edition)
+7,000
participants (2025 edition)
The programme
Six sections
and a prize with a name of its own
The festival's official programme is organised into sections ranging from feature films to film schools, always with the western and the cinema shot in Almería as the guiding thread.
Short films
The short format, where new voices revisit the codes of the genre in just a few minutes of screen time.
Outlaw
The outlaw section: works that stray from the marked trail, like the characters that give it its name.
RTVA award
The award linked to the Andalusian public broadcaster within the official programme.
Film schools
A space for those starting out: work by film-school students screened in the village of the western.
Panorama
A window open to other perspectives and titles that round off each edition's programme.
Since 2014, the festival has also awarded the Premio Tabernas de Cine, its honorary distinction: a tribute to the great figures of the western and of filmmaking in Almería, adding a new name to the desert's cinematic memory every October.
The set
A festival filmed
on location
Few festivals can claim to take place inside their own film set. Around Tabernas stretches the Tabernas desert, the only one in Europe, with the western towns that cinema left standing: the same badlands horizon the cameras framed half a century ago is still there, waiting for the next shot.
It is no coincidence that the festival is organised by the Town Council of Tabernas together with Oasys MiniHollywood and Fort Bravo — the district's film-set towns — with the support of the Junta de Andalucía and the Diputación of Almería. Here, cinema and territory are one and the same.
Practical information
Plan your visit
Dates
In October · 2026 edition: 8–12 October
Place
Tabernas and its desert · province of Almería
Organiser
Town Council of Tabernas, with Oasys MiniHollywood and Fort Bravo · supported by the Junta de Andalucía and the Diputación
Programme
Published every year on the official website · almeriawesternfilmfestival.es
Photographs: Maksym Abramov, Jorge Royan · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA