Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

With To­ba­go Car­ni­val 2025 less than two months away, band­lead­ers say reg­is­tra­tions are mov­ing strong­ly and prepa­ra­tions are in full swing. But while the pri­vate side of the fes­ti­val is press­ing ahead, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly has re­mained silent.

The To­ba­go Fes­ti­vals Com­mis­sion and the Di­vi­sion of Tourism are yet to re­lease de­tails on this year’s bud­get, the launch of the event, or oth­er key plans. Ef­forts by Guardian Me­dia to get an­swers from both bod­ies over the past week were un­suc­cess­ful.

This si­lence stands in sharp con­trast to the mo­men­tum among mas bands.

Dex­ter Sandy, pres­i­dent of Icon­ic Mas, said male sec­tions are al­ready 75 to 80 per cent filled. He con­firmed fe­male cos­tumes have reached near­ly half their tar­get and cred­it­ed this year’s “Trop­ics” theme for dri­ving stronger sales than in 2024.

“Cos­tume sales are ahead of last year, and the feed­back on Trop­ics has been ex­cel­lent,” Sandy said.

Icon­ic Mas is al­so pro­mot­ing a week­end pack­age that in­cludes an all-in­clu­sive J’Ou­vert with break­fast, a Sat­ur­day sun­set pool tour, a pre­mi­um Sun­day road pa­rade, and an af­ter-par­ty. Sandy said the aim is to give mas­quer­aders a com­plete Car­ni­val ex­pe­ri­ence.

Sean An­tho­ny, founder of Jade Mon­key Mas, ad­mit­ted book­ings were mov­ing more slow­ly but said in­ter­est is steady. He not­ed new fea­tures have been added to draw more par­tic­i­pants, in­clud­ing a brunch zone, which he de­scribed as part of “the full Jade Mon­key ex­pe­ri­ence.”

Fog An­gels, the is­land’s largest Car­ni­val band, re­port­ed what it called an “over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive” re­sponse so far. Founder Tele Cruz said both lo­cal and over­seas mas­quer­aders have been reg­is­ter­ing ear­ly to se­cure their spots. How­ev­er, Cruz again point­ed to air­lift as a re­cur­ring chal­lenge.

“Trans­porta­tion ac­cess re­mains a ma­jor bar­ri­er de­spite the in­ter­est,” he lament­ed.

Still, Fog An­gels has con­firmed it will con­tin­ue its slate of pre­mi­um J’Ou­vert, mas, beach, and boat par­ties for 2025, say­ing the fo­cus is still on de­liv­er­ing a high stan­dard of en­ter­tain­ment and cul­tur­al cel­e­bra­tion.

To­ba­go Car­ni­val was first staged from Oc­to­ber 28–30, 2022, as a stand­alone fes­ti­val sep­a­rate from Trinidad’s Car­ni­val, with a bud­get of $17.5 mil­lion and ac­tu­al spend­ing es­ti­mat­ed at $13 mil­lion.

In 2023, the bud­get fell to $12.6 mil­lion, and the fes­ti­val at­tract­ed an es­ti­mat­ed 30,000 vis­i­tors, with most events cen­tralised in Scar­bor­ough.

For 2024, the al­lo­ca­tion was fur­ther re­duced to $9 mil­lion, with $2 mil­lion ear­marked for stake­hold­ers.