In two weeks, it will be Christ­mas.

But pro­mot­ers around the coun­try are hop­ing for a Christ­mas mir­a­cle for the sea­son that fol­lows the Yule­tide Sea­son, as there are al­ready signs that Car­ni­val, T&T’s largest tourism event, will be scaled back as a re­sult of re­cent gov­ern­ment de­ci­sions.

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta tab­u­lat­ed by the Tick­et Fed­er­a­tion (TF) Car­ni­val Cal­en­dar 2026, it is es­ti­mat­ed that there will be few­er than 150 fetes for Car­ni­val 2026. To put that in per­spec­tive, in Feb­ru­ary 2025 alone, 152 of the 254 fetes for the 2025 Car­ni­val sea­son were held.

It is no­table that Car­ni­val 2025 fea­tured a longer sea­son by about two weeks, with Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day be­ing cel­e­brat­ed on March 3 and March 4 com­pared to the Feb­ru­ary 16 and 17 Car­ni­val dates for 2026.

How­ev­er the TF da­ta stat­ed that there are cur­rent­ly 67 fetes list­ed for the en­tire month of Jan­u­ary 2026, while there were 67 Car­ni­val events list­ed for rel­a­tive­ly short ex­panse of Car­ni­val dur­ing March 2025.

The TF team, how­ev­er, not­ed that the 67 events list­ed in Jan­u­ary 2026 are more than the 35 list­ed in Jan­u­ary 2025, but this was ex­pect­ed due to the short­er sea­son, which would see on­ly sev­en Car­ni­val week­ends mean­ing more events which would have been in Feb­ru­ary last year would fall with­in Jan­u­ary.

Last week, the T&T Pro­mot­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPA) sent a let­ter to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and sub­se­quent­ly held a press con­fer­ence urg­ing the gov­ern­ment to re­con­sid­er its de­ci­sion to ban the use of venues man­aged by the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T for Car­ni­val fetes.

They con­firmed that the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to in­crease ex­cise du­ties on al­co­hol prod­ucts by 100 per cent in the 2026 Bud­get had al­ready dealt the Car­ni­val fra­ter­ni­ty a blow.

Dur­ing a Par­lia­men­tary de­bate on the Gov­ern­ment’s mo­tion to in­crease ex­cise du­ties on al­co­hol and to­bac­co prod­ucts on Oc­to­ber 31, Diego Mar­tin West Hans Des Vi­gnes not­ed that many Car­ni­val stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing pro­mot­ers and band­lead­ers, had stat­ed the move au­to­mat­i­cal­ly shift­ed their mar­gins in­to the red.

Des Vi­gnes said then, “A lot of these pro­mot­ers have al­ready sold their fete tick­ets at what­ev­er price. This 100 per cent in­crease now moves them from a prof­it mar­gin to a loss. This is al­so so with a lot of the mas bands be­cause the mas bands have al­ready sold all-in­clu­sive cos­tume pack­ages and this now puts them in a sit­u­a­tion where they will make a loss.”

Adri­an Chan­dler, co-di­rec­tor of Air Com­mit­tee, said dur­ing last week’s press con­fer­ence that fi­nan­cial loss­es of hun­dreds of thou­sands were ex­pect­ed by pro­mot­ers for the sea­son.

He said, “We an­tic­i­pate loss­es. You will def­i­nite­ly see a shift in some of the events, and what the scale and type of events might be, you might see, you might quick­er see a brunch (food) in­clu­sive but pay for your drinks. Al­co­hol has gone up by 60 per cent, 100 per cent in some cas­es. So we do an­tic­i­pate some sort of loss­es. I know of oth­er events that would have been can­celled be­cause of that. So, yes, we do an­tic­i­pate loss­es.”

Chan­dler ex­plained dur­ing that press con­fer­ence that the venue ban im­posed on the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my (BLCA) had meant one of Air Com­mit­tee’s flag­ship events Out in South was al­ready can­celled.

In do­ing so, he not­ed that the pro­mot­ers were be­ing sent to venues which were not on­ly small­er than the BLCA, but al­so clos­er to res­i­den­tial ar­eas where they had pre­vi­ous­ly re­ceived noise com­plaints.

“Out in South, we have no choice but to can­cel that event be­cause we can’t call it Out it North, we can’t take it up the road. We once ex­ist­ed in SAPA and noise was cit­ed as an is­sue and we moved be­cause of that. We are ask­ing for clar­i­ty be­cause they are say­ing to use spaces such as Skin­ner Park, and there are res­i­dents that bound that venue. So you’re telling us to move from what we see or what we deem the per­fect so­lu­tion, and you are send­ing us back some­where where we once ex­ist­ed,” said Chan­dler, who al­so not­ed that his team had worked with the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) at the venue with re­gard to the place­ment of speak­ers to re­duce noise trav­el­ling to res­i­den­tial ar­eas near the Sta­di­um and had reg­u­lar­ly got clear­ances.

It was not­ed by a Palmyra res­i­dent that it was ob­vi­ous some pro­mot­ers, typ­i­cal­ly those tra­di­tion­al­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with south­ern events, man­aged noise at the venue bet­ter than oth­ers.

Out in South was one of many events high­light­ed by the TTPA, which were di­rect­ly im­pact­ed by the ban on events at the BLCA, the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um and the Jean Pierre Com­plex. The TTPA al­so not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment did re­verse its de­ci­sion to ban use of the In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front as a venue, but with the cost of rent, the cost of venue in­creased 500 per cent.

The oth­er is­sue raised by the TTPA is the fact that the banned venues have much larg­er ca­pac­i­ty po­ten­tial than their al­ter­na­tives, cre­at­ing not just a lo­gis­ti­cal headache for the pro­mot­ers but al­so sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duc­ing the rev­enue avail­able for them as well.

“There aren’t many venues in T&T, maybe even in the Caribbean, that could fa­cil­i­tate that num­ber as safe­ly and as suc­cess­ful­ly as we have done it over the years at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my,” said Dami­an Ba­boolal, sec­re­tary of Na­pari­ma Col­lege’s Past Stu­dents As­so­ci­a­tion, as he ex­plained the de­ci­sion had put the Na­pari­ma Col­lege All In­clu­sive fete in doubt.

“We have done it at Na­pari­ma Bowl for many years, but we have grown in size. If we grow in size, we make more mon­ey to help the school. We need­ed to go to a big­ger venue. We went to Bri­an Lara. Did it there for two years. We raised al­most $750,000 for the school, all to help fund the school pro­grammes. So when we talk about size and the amount of peo­ple, we al­so need to think about the size of the events and the im­pact that it has on the dif­fer­ent peo­ple.”

He ex­plained fur­ther, “As I men­tioned, there are not many places we could go, and for Na­pari­ma Col­lege on Car­ni­val Fri­day, look­ing to find a venue now, less than 100 days away to Car­ni­val. Where do we go? If you go back to the Bowl, we prob­a­bly could do the event, but we prob­a­bly do it for 2,000 peo­ple, when we could have 5,000 to 6,000 peo­ple, so you’re lim­it­ing our abil­i­ty to raise funds.”

Ba­boolal al­so not­ed that Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege had moved its fete for sim­i­lar rea­sons.

The events list­ed by the TTPA had ex­pect­ed at­ten­dances rang­ing from as low as 1,000 to as high as 14,000, with the TTPA es­ti­mat­ing that 10,000 ser­vice providers and staff who de­pend on these ma­jor events for their an­nu­al in­come would be im­pact­ed by the ban.

These in­clud­ed work­ers for stage, sound, light­ing and rig­ging com­pa­nies, dé­cor spe­cial­ists, event pro­duc­tion crews, se­cu­ri­ty firms, bar­tenders and cater­ers, tick­et­ing and pro­mo­tion­al agen­cies, trans­porta­tion providers, equip­ment rental com­pa­nies, clean­ing and san­i­ta­tion teams and a wide range of mi­cro-con­trac­tors, ac­cord­ing to the TTPA.