Colourful hot-air balloon festival - 10th August 2026

Cantoya Fest's ten years old. It's a balloon festival in Mexico. Teams make giant paper balloons. This year, 20,000 visitors watched the displays.

Cantoya's the name for the special balloons. It's the name of Mexico's first aeronaut.

Don Joaquín de la Cantolla y Rico made the country's first hot-air balloons. He made paper balloons too.

Local people learned this skill. They started competitions for balloon making. Then, some balloon makers started Cantoya Fest.

Raúl Dionisio Cortés is a balloon maker. He loves the art and skill of making balloons.

Raúl Dionisio Cortés: "The significance of creating a work of art using a paper balloon is something that only balloon makers can truly appreciate."

Cantoya Fest's a competition. Local and national teams enter. This year, 17 people from other countries joined these teams. They're from Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, France, and Italy too.

It's a friendly competition, says Jorge Alberto Belmont. He chooses the best balloons.

Jorge Alberto Belmont: "It's a 100 percent family-friendly event that brings people together. It's really lovely. For us, it's a traditional toy, but that traditional toy brings families and friends together. Even though there's a competition among the balloon groups, everyone comes together to support one another and get their balloons to fly."

This year, Cantoya Fest wants to see dreams in the sky. That was the instruction for the competition.

The town's name means 'place of happiness'. The colourful balloons definitely made people smile.