In a few days, the reign of the mer­ry monarch will be on the way once again.

Af­ter some ear­ly un­cer­tain­ty, there are signs that the 2026 Car­ni­val will be ex­e­cut­ed as ex­pect­ed.

Last week, Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Michelle Ben­jamin stat­ed that ac­com­mo­da­tion across the coun­try is ful­ly booked, while ar­rivals at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port had record­ed more than 37,000 vis­i­tors.

Ma­jor all-in­clu­sive events last week Sat­ur­day, Fete Gala at the Queen’s Park Oval and Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege’s Fete Roy­al, re­port­ed they were sold out. The greens and the North Stand at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah were sim­i­lar­ly heav­i­ly sub­scribed, while the Eye Slam Con­cert held at the Fla­va Vil­lage cre­at­ed not on­ly foot traf­fic at the Sa­van­nah but al­so ve­hic­u­lar traf­fic in and around the city for those try­ing to at­tend or dri­ve around up­town Port-of-Spain.

While it ap­pears to be busi­ness as usu­al from those in­di­ca­tors, there have been some ca­su­al­ties along the way.

On Fri­day, Tick­et Fed­er­a­tion con­firmed there were at least 40 events that ap­peared on the brand’s event tick­et cal­en­dar last year, which did not find a space in this year’s Car­ni­val.

While this sea­son is about two weeks short­er than 2025, some no­table omis­sions in­clude Out in South, Mega, GT Sea and Gate­way to the World.

Lost Tribe band­leader and Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion (TTC­BA) vice pres­i­dent Valmi­ki Ma­haraj ad­mit­ted that the un­cer­tain­ty that lin­gered over the sea­son as a re­sult of changes made to poli­cies re­gard­ing al­co­hol prices and venue avail­abil­i­ty, which di­rect­ly im­pact­ed the in­dus­try, did not sim­ply dis­ap­pear.

“I don’t think this feel­ing has dis­si­pat­ed be­cause change in a so­ci­ety or change in any space gives peo­ple some­times an un­easy feel­ing, whether the change is con­sid­ered good, bad or any­thing in be­tween. Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, when you’re in a space of struc­tur­al change or any sort of change, you kind of feel ner­vous about it,” said Ma­haraj in a phone con­ver­sa­tion with the Busi­ness Guardian on Fri­day.

How­ev­er, he said from his per­spec­tive as Lost Tribe band­leader, his brand has en­joyed a suc­cess­ful Car­ni­val so far, al­though he felt the struc­ture of T&T’s Car­ni­val in terms of bands launch­ing mid-year helped many man­age the piv­ot re­quired for those changes.

“The re­sponse to the band has been great. Our sales have been good. We launched in Ju­ly last year, and the ini­tial re­sponse to every­thing has def­i­nite­ly been good. Our process of pur­chas­ing, our process of pro­duc­tion and every­thing, by ex­ten­sion, starts ear­li­er as well. And we do that be­cause we just need­ed time to be able to pro­duce and for you know, do what we have to do so that as well, has been do­ing good. With re­gard to Fete Yard, Fete Yard was, I mean, to us, a grand suc­cess,” said Ma­haraj.

How­ev­er, he did ac­knowl­edge that there had been feed­back that the TTC­BA re­ceived where par­tic­u­lar­ly small­er bands had strug­gled.

“Some of the small­er bands have told us that, yes, their sales are slow­er. But as well, some of the small­er bands, their sales pat­terns are very dif­fer­ent, so they launched their bands lat­er, and the bulk of their sales come in lat­er. So I’ve had con­ver­sa­tions with many of them and some bands spend the months be­fore prepar­ing the cos­tumes and so, but their sales hap­pen in the weeks im­me­di­ate­ly be­fore Car­ni­val. So right now, they will be sell­ing to the peo­ple com­ing down,” he said. “So I think the true recog­ni­tion of how Car­ni­val’s pat­terns have changed would re­al­ly come on Ash Wednes­day.”

Ear­li­er in the week, a call was made for a wider as­sess­ment of the eco­nom­ic im­pact of Car­ni­val dur­ing last week Wednes­day’s Term Fi­nance Well­ness Wednes­day we­bi­nar, Car­ni­val & Cul­ture—Fu­elling Eco­nom­ic Growth in T&T. Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) CEO Kei­ba Mot­t­ley con­firmed that the NCC is col­lab­o­rat­ing with the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank on a pi­lot study to mea­sure Car­ni­val’s eco­nom­ic im­pact.

It was a dis­cus­sion in which Ma­haraj par­tic­i­pat­ed, and he, along with oth­er pre­sen­ters, not­ed that many as­pects of Car­ni­val ex­pe­ri­ence are of­ten over­looked com­pared to the large Car­ni­val bands and ma­jor fete events, as he not­ed that there were sev­er­al small­er or cheap­er events that could sim­i­lar­ly at­tract tourists.

An­dre Jef­fers, chief strat­e­gy of­fi­cer at ANSA McAL, agreed the mar­ket­ing for these events need­ed to be im­proved, as ex­clud­ing these ac­tiv­i­ties could lead to T&T los­ing out on for­eign ex­change from vis­i­tors who feel priced out of Car­ni­val.

Jef­fers said, “We know that the in­flux of vis­i­tors re­al­ly does im­pact the fes­ti­val, both in terms of the vibe of these very ex­cit­ed for­eign­ers com­ing in that last 10 days, but al­so ob­vi­ous­ly in terms of the di­rect for­eign ex­change. So, just think­ing strate­gi­cal­ly, I do be­lieve that the cost of com­ing in, ac­com­mo­da­tion, can be very pro­hib­i­tive.

“And then to Val’s point, those for­eign­ers are typ­i­cal­ly view­ing the Car­ni­val from so­cial me­dia, and the loud­est voic­es on so­cial me­dia around where we need to be and what flights we need to go tend to be the high­er priced ones, and so when they make a pur­chase de­ci­sion around com­ing to the Car­ni­val and they have flight and ac­com­mo­da­tion. They say I have to be in this fete, that fete, that fete, that’s where all the hype is. I think it then presents a pro­hib­i­tive chal­lenge where the vis­i­tor who may have been com­ing every year now has to make a de­ci­sion be­tween Trinidad and an­oth­er car­ni­val or be­tween Trinidad every oth­er year or every three years.”

He con­tin­ued, “And so just think­ing around strate­gies. I do be­lieve that it can go a long way if the larg­er voic­es on so­cial me­dia, the larg­er brands, start hav­ing a bit more broad­er seg­men­ta­tion of their of­fer­ings. Be­cause it’s all well and good to say, well, you know the Gayelle, but is the Gayelle get­ting that lev­el of vis­i­bil­i­ty in terms of pro­mo­tion, pack­ag­ing, mar­ket­ing, that the for­eign­er can then make a de­ci­sion and feel as if this is the place to be, this is where it is, this is the in­for­ma­tion, this is how I’ll be ac­com­mo­dat­ed to get there and come back. And that same sort of gloss that the big­ger brands have around the prob­a­bly high­er priced events, if they can add those to their port­fo­lio or part­ner to add those to their port­fo­lio, I think it can go a long way in terms of show­ing them as vi­able op­tions for the for­eign mar­kets.”

No­tably, Ganesh Kallicha­ran, the band leader of Ch­agua­nas’ most pop­u­lar J’Ou­vert bands, Jou­vert Junkiez, not­ed that sales for his band had been more pos­i­tive than ever, as the band was on track to sell out ahead of sched­ule.

He ex­plained that his band opt­ed not to utilise the all-in­clu­sive mod­el, and in­stead fo­cused on main­tain­ing a tra­di­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence which at­tract­ed mas­quer­aders.