Overview
- The festival, which took place Wednesday, August 26, 2026, filled Buñol with roughly 20,000 participants and used up to 165 tons of overripe tomatoes.
- The one-hour event began and ended with water-cannon signals, required participants to squash tomatoes before throwing, provided communal showers, and saw fire trucks hose down streets after the melee.
- Non-local attendees paid €15 to join and recent reporting says about 40% of participants over the past three years have been tourists, a shift that has pressured local crowd limits set after rapid growth.
- Coverage noted a rise in Indian visitors tied to the 2011 Bollywood film Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, which helped turn La Tomatina into an international bucket-list attraction.
- One outlet reported police used pepper spray briefly to disperse part of the crowd, but organisers completed routine cleanup and the festival proceeded without broader disruption.