THE PROJECT

More than a festival, a living ecosystem

2026 edition

ORIGIN AND VISION

An invitation to feel part of Anaga

Anaga Biofest is an invitation to feel part of the Macizo de Anaga Biosphere Reserve and everything it represents. Come closer and become part of a place where nature and rural life exist in balance. A unique territory awaits, with extraordinary biodiversity and a rich ethnographic heritage that moves and brings people together.

After five editions, the project has established itself as a platform for territorial regeneration where culture, education and nature intertwine to care for and strengthen the bonds between people and their surroundings. An alternative way of experiencing regenerative travel, in harmony with the territory’s environmental and sociocultural context.

Throughout the year, Anaga Biofest brings together a comprehensive action plan and a diverse programme of activities, initiatives and experiences with a positive impact on the territory. A cross-cutting approach built on community participation, the protection of natural and cultural heritage, and support for the local economy, inviting visitors to discover Anaga from a deeper, more balanced and committed perspective.

HOW IT WORKS

A process rooted in the territory

Each edition of Anaga Biofest follows a path that begins by listening and ends by measuring.

Listening

Participatory governance with the local community

Design

Programme co-created with the community

Activation

Festival and ongoing action in the territory

Impact

Measurement and accumulated legacy

Listening

The process begins in the territory through meetings with neighbourhood associations, producers, cultural groups and local stakeholders from Macizo de Anaga. Opportunities, sensitivities and real needs are identified. Decisions are made together with those who live and work in the Biosphere Reserve.

Design

This listening process gives rise to local partnerships that bring together complementary profiles. The programme is coordinated with patron saint festivals, local commemorations and community events. The festival does not impose a fixed programme, it connects with projects and gives visibility to what is already happening in Anaga. Every activity follows one clear principle: create positive impacts for the territory.

Activation

The festival and experiences are spread across different times of the year. Hiking, farm-to-table gastronomy, environmental volunteering, culture and collaboration between Biosphere Reserves. Small groups, personal attention and local people leading every experience. La Recova del Anaga Biofest is one of the meeting points between the project and the community, with over 20 local initiatives taking part in each edition.

Impact

Each edition is documented and measured: nest boxes installed and monitored, land stewardship agreements, volunteering participants, audience feedback. Data accumulates edition after edition, building a traceable impact record. We do not just seek to reduce our footprint, we aim to contribute positively to a place we feel is part of who we are.

METHODOLOGY

Experiences created hand in hand with the territory

The Anaga Biofest programme is born from shared work with people, groups and organisations that live in, care for or work within the Anaga Biosphere Reserve. The most authentic experiences come from the territory itself and from those who know it, inhabit it and feel it as their own.

The process begins by listening: stories, sensitivities and opportunities that emerge from the different hamlets across Macizo de Anaga. From that listening, territorial alliances are formed that bring together complementary profiles: neighbourhood associations, local producers and artisans, nature activity companies, educational centres and cultural groups.

The programme is concentrated in late summer and early autumn, respecting the rhythms of the territory, the seasonality of certain activities and the availability of the people who make them possible. At times, the festival is coordinated with local patron saint celebrations, local commemorations and community events, integrating into the life of the territory rather than superimposing itself upon it.

Rather than imposing external dynamics, the festival listens to what is already happening in Anaga and reinforces those existing networks, while weaving new connections. A management approach that has earned the project the Biosphere Recognition 2022 from UNESCO and the Travelling for Happiness 2025 Award in the Regenerative Tourism category.

«Where the landscape becomes a living laboratory»

— Anaga Biofest

COMMITMENT

Anaga without barriers

Anaga Biofest is a festival committed to a positive approach to diversity, with a cross-cutting component of socio-environmental education. We are committed to offering equal opportunities for responsible leisure for everyone, regardless of their physical, sensory or cognitive abilities.

To this end, the festival works in collaboration and involvement of groups and associations such as Montaña Para Todos, APANATE, Funcasor and Down Tenerife, among others. The Punto Naranja at La Recova embodies this commitment, providing a barrier-free space with interpreters and adapted information.

Increasing the visibility of the gender perspective is another of the project’s goals. Specific activities and routes are designed to highlight the role of rural women in Anaga, as well as in other biosphere reserves, showcasing their importance in the socioeconomic and cultural life of rural communities like this one.

GOVERNANCE

Weaving community from the territory

A shared decision-making model where institutions, the local community, cultural agents and the local business community design and deliver projects connected with the reality of Anaga. Participatory governance is not a discourse, it is how every edition of the festival is shaped.

175+

Local stakeholders
per edition

Institutional
levels

public-private
partner organisations

Discover the full governance model

Discover the governance model

TRACK RECORD

Five editions, a growing project

What we know today as Anaga Biofest was born in autumn 2021 in Tegueste, under the name Tegueste Biofest. It was the result of a year-long strategic planning process to position the municipality as a gateway to the Anaga Biosphere Reserve. That first edition brought together over 350 people across 30 activities centred on hiking, farm-to-table gastronomy, crafts and ethnographic heritage.

Since then, each edition has added new territories, new alliances and new lessons. From Tegueste to La Laguna and Santa Cruz de Tenerife. From Tenerife to Gran Canaria, La Palma, Lanzarote and La Graciosa, El Hierro and Fuerteventura. In the upcoming 2026 edition, the network of partnerships across the Canary Islands will be completed with a visit to the La Gomera Biosphere Reserve. What began as a local festival has become a network connecting six Biosphere Reserve territories each year.

Behind each edition are real people: the neighbour from Roque Negro who opened her home to share the hamlet’s memory, the beekeeper from Taganana who introduced us to the world of bees and the flavours of his honey, the families who joined the first community gathering between Pedro Álvarez and El Batán. A project that grows because the people who sustain it feel it as their own.

2021

1st edition