Playa del Carmen's Thanksgiving Jazz Weekend Is Gone. The Music Didn't Leave With It.

For about two decades, the last weekend of November in Playa del Carmen meant the Riviera Maya International Jazz Festival. It was timed to the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday and built to pull visitors into town for one long weekend of music. That festival isn't coming back this year. Thanksgiving falls on November 26, and jazz in Playa del Carmen now comes from three places: a civil association that ran a full festival in October, a live-music club announced at a hotel, and a municipal program of street performances along Quinta Avenida that covers the holiday weekend. One state board organized the music before. Now several organizers share it, each on its own calendar.

One organizer, one weekend, then none

The old festival ran on the calendar of the Consejo de Promoción Turística de Quintana Roo, the state tourism promotion board. According to Noticaribe, the last edition the board organized took place in 2023. In 2024 the board replaced it with the Mexican Caribbean Music Fest, a traveling event built around other genres.

The festival sat on one institution's agenda. When the board dropped it, Playa del Carmen lost its jazz weekend, and nothing else was set up to take its place.

The 2026 comeback that stayed a plan

In May 2025, the municipality said it would take on the festival itself. Estefanía Hernández, then the municipal tourism secretary, told Noticaribe that a festival of that caliber needs a heavy investment and that the city was working hard to hold it in 2026. She said the city was also talking with the organizers of a major jazz festival in Rome about bringing that event to Playa del Carmen.

"Rest assured that at the municipal level we are committed to bringing back a jazz festival that is worthy and, above all, of a high level for everyone in Playa and internationally."

That is Hernández in the same Noticaribe interview, translated from Spanish.

By this October, the beach festival was still described as suspended. In an October 8 report, Noticaribe said budget problems had put it on temporary hold and that no return was in sight. In the same report, Ricardo Del Valle Prieto, the municipal director of Espectáculos, said some other activity could be organized for the Thanksgiving weekend, as long as it respects the Mexican traditions the city promotes. He also said more coordination is needed among the tourism and economic development offices and the Instituto Municipal de la Cultura y las Artes.

While the city weighed what a replacement might look like, a smaller organization had already filled October.

October turned into jazz month

That October festival was the third Playa del Carmen Jazz Fest, produced by Explayarte Asociación Civil, which runs an arts school in town. La Jornada Maya reported in July that the program would run from October 1 to 16, with artists from Mexico, France, the United States and Spain. The opening run went like this:

• October 1: Emmanuel Mora Organ Trío and Rubén Pastor Trío, an opening night for Mexican jazz
• October 2: Sampling Is Beautiful from France with Kike Pat
• October 3: Santa Sabina with U.S. saxophonist Scott Paddock
• October 4: Sole Giménez of Spain, founder and original voice of Presuntos Implicados, closing the international cycle

The headline concerts were ticketed through Teatro de la Ciudad, and children under 16 got in free with an adult. Santa Sabina, one of the festival's headliners, played at the theater, as the October 8 Noticaribe report noted when it called the Explayarte event a similar festival on a smaller scale.

The Explayarte festival differed from the old beach weekend in how long it lasted. From October 5 to 16, the Escuela Explayarte hosted a free improvisation workshop on weekday afternoons from 2:30 to 4 p.m. and a free jazz ensemble workshop on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the same time slot, open to students, musicians and anyone interested. By October 19, Heraldo de México Quintana Roo counted ten concerts. Ieoushua Barragán, the Explayarte Jazz Ensamble and the Swiss group 60 Miles had joined the opening lineup, and the academic program had grown to six master classes and three free workshops. A workshop with Obed Orozco and a harmony master class with Mario Monroy were still on the schedule at that point.

The old festival packed everything into one weekend. Explayarte spread its program over half a month and paired the concerts with teaching.

A club where the festival used to be

Explayarte's biggest October news came after a concert. On the Saturday night 60 Miles played a free show to an audience Heraldo put at close to 300, the festival's producers announced ATOUSS, a new club for live jazz. ATOUSS will be based at the Hotel Courtyard by Marriott Playa del Carmen, the hotel where 60 Miles had just performed.

Heraldo reported that the project aims to build a music scene that doesn't rely only on festivals or special events to bring players and audiences together. When one board ran the beach festival and then stopped, the town had nothing to fall back on. A permanent venue changes that. No opening date has been published yet. For updates, the festival points people to its Instagram account, @pdcjazzfest.

The city's version moves to Quinta Avenida

The municipality's own jazz plan comes third. On September 3, the administration of Mayor Estefanía Mercado released an official calendar of nine events for the rest of 2026, coordinated by the Secretaría de Desarrollo Económico y de Atracción de Inversiones under secretary Estefanía Hernández Flores and a local gastronomic committee. The calendar includes a Jazz Fest Playa del Carmen running from November 25 to December 12, with performances along Quinta Avenida featuring local talent. That window covers Thanksgiving Day on November 26 and the weekend after it, the slot the beach festival used to hold.

Here is what the official calendar lists from mid-November on:

The calendar has already held up for the fall. The Semana Patria Gastronómica opened at Parque Fundadores on September 12 with 30 exhibitors and ran through September 15, as Noticaribe reported. The first Festival del Postre opened October 14 at Plaza 28 de Julio, also with 30 local exhibitors, and ran from 5 to 10 p.m. on its scheduled dates.

The Quinta Avenida program is a different kind of event from the old festival. The city describes it in terms of local commerce: it projects more than 10 million pesos in economic impact across the full calendar, about 7 million of it in direct sales, with more than 500 local entrepreneurs and exhibitors taking part through open calls. Its jazz stage is the street, with local groups playing to passersby, and a three-week run in place of one big weekend. As of late October, no lineup, daily hours or admission details for the Quinta Avenida program have been released.

Thanksgiving weekend on the new map

The last week of November will look different this year. The Mercadito Navideño will already be running at the Explanada del Palacio Nuevo, and the Quinta Avenida jazz program starts the day before Thanksgiving. The organization that filled October with ten concerts and free workshops has announced a permanent jazz club at the Courtyard by Marriott.

None of these three depends on the state tourism board, and none of them needs the others to happen. They also run on different dates: October for Explayarte, late November into December for the city, and possibly year-round once ATOUSS opens its doors.

Whether you host family over Thanksgiving or are thinking about owning a place within walking distance of Quinta Avenida, it helps to know how the town's calendar works when it's choosing a building or a block. Riviera Maya Homes follows Playa del Carmen's events calendar as closely as its listings. Schedule a personalized consultation and we'll show you which parts of town put you within an easy walk of the Quinta Avenida stages, Teatro de la Ciudad and Parque Fundadores.