Semana Santa in Santiago Atitlán: A Complete Guide to the Holy Week Traditions

And then, from a side street, a figure appears on the back of a man who is walking very slowly and very deliberately, moving back and forth to the sound of matracas and a drum. It is Maximón — the Rilaj Mam, the Gran Abuelo — carried by the telinel of the Cofradía Santa Cruz, the shaman chosen for his spiritual strength to bear the weight of the Grandfather of all. He comes to walk behind the Catholic procession, these two figures from different cosmologies moving through the same streets of the same village, and the crowd, mostly local, mostly Tz’utujil, completely absorbed, watches as if time has become suspended.

I knew, standing there, that I was watching something that had no equivalent anywhere in the world.

 Before diving in, a few starting points: for the broader context of Holy Week across Lake Atitlán and how to plan your week visiting the towns that surround the lake, see Holy Week at Lake Atitlán: Semana Santa in Guatemala’s Most Spiritual Setting. For the full story of Maximón and his place in Tz’utujil Maya cosmovision, Maximón: Everything You Need to Know About Guatemala’s Most Fascinating Figure is essential reading.  This article goes deep on what Semana Santa in Santiago Atitlán is like specifically.

Understanding Semana Santa in Santiago Atitlán: The Maya Foundation

Semana Santa is by far the most important time of the year for traditionalist Atitecos. When the Spanish Franciscan friars first introduced the story of Jesus being sacrificed for the good of the people by being hung on the tree of life, the Tz’utujil took to it immediately — not because it replaced their beliefs, but because it fit so naturally within them. The sacrifice of the sky god for the good of the people. The tree of life. Death that becomes the condition for resurrection and the return of the rains. These were concepts that already lived in Maya cosmovision.

Semana Santa replaced the “dead days” — the Uayeb, the five extra days inserted into the Maya calendar to keep it aligned with natural cycles. These were liminal days when magic roamed free, when spirits took full reign, when the normal rules of the world loosened their grip. Semana Santa became that liminal time. It is the period when, in the Tz’utujil understanding, the sky god Jesucristo has been sacrificed, and his twin brother — the earth god, the Rilaj Mam, Maximón — takes over while Jesus awaits resurrection. This is also the time to start planting. The earth is more important than the sky in these particular days. Everything that happens during Semana Santa in Santiago — the fruit brought from the coast, the fertility symbolism encoded in certain processions, Maximón’s eventual return to his cofradía — is part of a coherent cosmological logic that long predates Christianity and has simply absorbed it.

The rituals performed during Semana Santa in Santiago Atitlán are, at their core, traditional Maya earth religion ceremonies layered with Spanish Catholic tradition. Every cofradía is active. Every ceremony has its logic. The whole thing unfolds, as the santiagoatitlan.com source says, like a great performance where each sector does its part — and has done so, generation after generation, for centuries.

Getting to Santiago Atitlán

Santiago Atitlán sits on the southern shore of Lake Atitlán, accessible by lancha from Panajachel (approximately 25 to 35 minutes, roughly Q25 to Q35) or from San Pedro La Laguna (about 20 to 25 minutes). Lanchas run from approximately 6:30 in the morning to 7:30 in the evening. On Good Friday specifically, the morning lanchas fill up fast — be at the dock early.

By road, Santiago is reachable via the Pan-American Highway, turning south at Godínez. Some travelers combine driving with lanchas, arriving on the road and departing by boat or vice versa.

For everything you need to know about navigating between lake villages, see Complete Guide to Lake Atitlán Boat Services. And for the broader question of how to plan your time across the whole lake during Holy Week, Semana Santa Itinerary at Lake Atitlán: How to Plan Your Holy Week has a full framework.

Where to Stay in Santiago Atitlán

Staying overnight in Santiago — particularly the night before Good Friday — changes the entire experience. You wake up in the village before anyone else arrives. You see the alfombras being made in the early morning darkness. You walk the streets before the day-trippers get off the boats. This is worth the extra planning.

Hotel y Restaurante Bambu is, in my opinion, the best hotel in Santiago, with lake views, a swimming pool, a hot tub, sauna, and a restaurant with views of the water and the volcano. It sits on the lake road toward San Lucas Tolimán, a short tuk-tuk from the village center. The gardens are beautiful and the birdwatching, including a good chance of seeing the Resplendent Quetzal with a local guide — is excellent. Book two to three months ahead for Holy Week.

Hotel Tiosh Abaj is another strong choice, also on the lakeshore with a private beach area, an outdoor pool, and good reviews from families. Casa Josefa Hotel is smaller and more central, with a garden, excellent breakfasts, and a more intimate feel if you want to be in the heart of the village.

If you prefer to be in the center of the action within walking distance of the church and plaza, search Airbnb for private houses in Santiago, there are some good options that never appear in hotel listings, particularly for families or small groups.

Holy Week in Santiago Atitlán: What to Expect Day by Day

Palm Saturday — The Fruit Arrives from Chicacao

This is one of the most significant and least-documented events of Holy Week in Santiago, and almost no visitors know it is happening.

Palm Saturday, the day before Palm Sunday,  marks the beginning of the traditional Semana Santa ceremonies in Santiago with a ritual that is emphatically not Catholic in origin. On this day, young men from the cofradías walk to Chicacao, a village on the Pacific coast lowlands south of the lake that was historically part of Tz’utujil territory. The journey is an overnight walk of many hours. The mandate is specific: to bring tropical fruit — cacao, pataxte, melocotones, bananas — that will serve as ceremonial offerings for Maximón during the entire week. An academic study on Maximón’s cult documents that the alguaciles (young cofrade members) are accompanied by the most senior elders and are officially commissioned by the cabecera of the village for this mission.

The route they walk is ancient. It reaffirms a relationship between Santiago and Chicacao that goes back centuries — Chicacao was once an aldea of Santiago before it was administratively separated in 1934 when coffee production replaced cacao. Families in Chicacao who share kinship with Santiago families help the pilgrims along the way. The procession, according to santiagoatitlan.com, is deeply cosmic: the men become the “mares” of Maximón, and he “rides” them up from the coast along with fruit that is explicitly phallic in symbolism — this is a fertility rite, a rain-calling ceremony, the opening of a week that is fundamentally about the earth’s capacity to give life.

When the fruit arrives in Santiago on Palm Saturday morning it is received and examined. The condition of the fruit is an augury: fresh and perfect means good things for the village in the coming year; bruised or rotten is a bad sign. The fruit will be hung throughout the week from the giant bowers arching over the streets, mixed with flowers and greenery, transforming the village into something that feels genuinely otherworldly.

If you are in Santiago on Palm Saturday,  and it is worth arriving this early specifically to be there,  walk the streets before the church activity begins. The bowers and fruit arches being assembled are unlike anything you will see during Holy Week anywhere else in Guatemala.

Palm Sunday — First Processions and a Late Mass

Palm Sunday in Santiago Atitlán begins the official Holy Week celebrations. There is a procession from the convent to the main Iglesia Parroquial Santiago Apóstol in the evening, historically at 7:00 PM,  followed by a mass. The procession commemorates the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem and marks the beginning of the community’s formal Catholic observances.

This is also a good moment to orient yourself to the village if you are arriving for the first time. Santiago Atitlán was originally called Tz’ikin Jaay, “house of birds” in Tz’utujil,  and the colonial church founded by the Franciscans in 1547 is one of the most extraordinary in Guatemala. Do not rush through it. The interior is lined with wooden statues of saints dressed in new clothes by local women every year. The carved altarpiece at the front was renovated in the 1970s by brothers Diego and Nicolás Chávez Sojuel, who quietly transformed the central piece from a European vision of heaven into a Maya sacred mountain, with two cofradía members climbing toward a cave at the peak. Inside the church entrance, a memorial plaque honors Father Stanley Rother, the American missionary beloved by the community who was assassinated here by ultrarightist forces in 1981, a figure of such importance to Santiago that his cause for canonization has been formally advanced.

Palm Sunday is a day of arrival, orientation, and opening movement. The cofradías are beginning their own internal ceremonies. The fruit arches are up. The village is beginning to hum.

Food on Palm Sunday: This is when the first traditional Semana Santa foods appear in the streets and markets. Torrejas — the sweet egg-and-bread fritters soaked in honey syrup and dusted with cinnamon that are Guatemala’s unofficial Holy Week comfort food — are being made in every family kitchen. Street vendors selling atol de elote, the warm corn drink, appear at the market. For the full picture of what to eat and look for during the week, our Traditional Guatemalan Semana Santa Foods: A Complete Guide has everything.

Holy Monday — The Clothes Go to the Lake

Holy Monday is a day of quiet ceremony. In the evening  the cofrades of the Cofradía Santa Cruz carry Maximón’s garments to the lakeshore and wash them in the water. This is a quiet and intimate ceremony. This is a ritual purification, not a laundry task. The lake is considered sacred. The washing of Maximón’s garments in its waters is the opening act of his week-long ceremonial cycle, preparing the spiritual vessel that will wear them for the most important days of the year.

If you want to witness this, walk to the lakeshore in the evening. The ceremony is intimate and not performative, you will be standing at the edge of something that is genuinely not for you, and the respectful thing is to observe from a distance with full attention and no camera flashes.

Holy Tuesday — Maximón Is Dressed in Secret

All day Tuesday is dedicated to drying Maximón’s garments and, late at night, to a ceremony that is one of the most guarded in Santiago.

During the day, the cofradías are all in full activity, and there is celebration with music and a great deal of liquor at the Cofradía Santa Cruz. The atmosphere at the cofradía on Holy Tuesday is as close to purely local as it gets during the week. If you want to visit the cofradía, this day has a different quality from the tourist-adjacent energy of Thursday or Friday.

Late at night on Holy Tuesday, the telinel and the alcalde of the cofradía dress Maximón in a secret ceremony inside a large reed mat. Only the telinel, the Roox and the Rukaaj are permitted inside. 

Holy Wednesday — Maximón Moves Through the Streets

Holy Wednesday is the day most visitors who are in Santiago for more than just Good Friday come for, and it rewards the effort completely.

In the morning, at around 10:00 AM, there is a presentation of the fruit in front of the municipal building. This is the formal display of what the men brought from Chicacao — the examination of the augury. Fresh fruit: good year. Anything else: worry. After the fruit presentation, a marimba begins to play.

In the afternoon, Maximón begins his procession through the streets. The chamán of the cofradía carries him out of the cofradía — the santiagoatitlan.com source says he is accompanied by a group of women over 60, recognized as ancestral authorities of the community, who carry candles, followed by men and children with baskets of decorated fruit. The figure of “Monchito,” as some locals affectionately call him, is danced through the narrow streets to a son composed specifically for the Gran Abuelo.

He visits the mayor’s office first, where he is installed on a tule mat — the traditional Maya symbol of power — while the mayor and his advisors pay their respects. Then he is carried to his chapel on the side of the church plaza and hung on a pole. The santiagoatitlan.com community website describes the history with characteristic directness: there was a time when Maximón hung inside the church next to Jesus, as sacred brothers. When Catholic priests found out, they demanded he be removed. The community first moved him to the doorway. The Church eventually compromised and gave him a chapel on the church square, where he remains today.

Standing in that plaza on Holy Wednesday afternoon, watching Maximón arrive at his chapel as the marimba plays and the cofrades make their arrangements, is one of the most alive moments of the entire week. The village is almost entirely local at this point. You are genuinely inside something.

Note for photographers: The procession of Maximón through the streets on Holy Wednesday is one of the most photographable moments of the week, and it is also one where the etiquette matters enormously. The people in this procession are not performing for you. Ask before you raise a camera toward individuals. Walk alongside, not in front. For guidance on photographing Semana Santa respectfully and effectively, How to Photograph Semana Santa in Guatemala applies directly here.

Holy Thursday — Maximón in His Chapel

On Holy Thursday, Maximón is tied to his post inside the chapel. The community arrives to visit him all day: locals bearing offerings of cigars, candles, flowers, and liquor, making petitions, performing small personal ceremonies. There is a steady rhythm to the visitation that has nothing performative about it — these are real requests from real people, and the cofrades who receive them take them seriously.

The santiagoatitlan.com source notes that the figure is tied to the pole and decorated with the leaves of a plant called T’ney Mam. When he is tied, the cofrades say outwardly that he is Judas who wants to kill himself for having betrayed Jesus. But the source is clear that this is not true — it is the Catholic layer applied over a ritual of venerance that expresses grief for the death of Jesus within the broader Maya cosmological framework. Meanwhile, the brothers and young men make noise with matracas constantly, day and night without stopping.

Holy Thursday is also when the midnight procession takes place: an elaborate, night-time procession with Jesus, María Dolores, and the figure the santiagoatitlan.com source calls, without flinching, San Juan Carajo. After this procession, there is a distinctly Maya ceremony in which young men run back and forth between the church and where María Dolores is kept, and perform a ritual that is unambiguously a fertility and rainmaking ceremony. The santiagoatitlan.com source describes it vividly. Watching this at midnight on Holy Thursday, with fireworks going off across the village and marimba bands playing simultaneously from different cofradías, you understand viscerally that what you are witnessing has nothing to do with the Spanish Catholic tradition.

What to do on Holy Thursday:

Arrive in the morning and go directly to Maximón’s chapel. Holy Thursday is the best day to visit Maximón if you want a personal, unhurried experience — the crowds of Good Friday have not arrived yet and the cofrades are more available for interaction. Bring an offering: a pack of cigarettes, veladoras, flowers, or a small bottle of aguardiente. Make a donation. Ask a local guide to accompany you if you want real context and the possibility of conversation with the telinel or the cofrades. Our full guide on visiting Maximón — [LINK: Maximón: Everything You Need to Know About Guatemala’s Most Fascinating Figure] — has everything you need to know before you go.

Spend the afternoon walking the village. By Holy Thursday, every family along the procession route is making or completing their alfombra. In Santiago, these are not the strict geometric sawdust carpets of Antigua. They are family works — organic, colorful, using flowers, fruit, pine needles, and dyed sawdust in designs that reflect the Tz’utujil aesthetic tradition. Some are simple. Some are surprisingly elaborate. Walking the procession route in the afternoon and early evening, stopping to watch families at work, is one of the most intimate parts of the entire week.

If you have energy, stay for the beginning of the midnight procession. Even the first hour of it is extraordinary — the village lit by candles and the sodium glow of the streetlights, fireworks cracking constantly, the sound of multiple marimbas coming from different directions.

Good Friday — The Day the Universe Holds Its Breath

Good Friday in Santiago Atitlán is unlike any other day in Guatemala.

Get there before dawn if you possibly can. The first lanchas leave Panajachel around 6:30. From San Pedro the crossing is shorter; the first boat typically leaves around the same time. If you are staying in Santiago, simply wake up early. This is the single most important logistical instruction in this entire article: the village before the day-trippers arrive is a completely different place. You can walk the full procession route, see the alfombras in their final state before any procession foot has touched them, buy torrejas and fruit from vendors who are just setting up, and stand in the plaza as the light comes up over the volcanos with the smell of incense already drifting from the church.

The morning preparation: The day starts early with the adornment of the Señor Sepultado. The Maya concept of sacrifice comes into full play on Good Friday, and everyone must give themselves to this day in order for the universe to continue working. Jesus is taken down from the cross and placed into the great glass casket with much ceremony. He is accompanied at all times by a special figure the source calls “the rain prayer” — a man who has dedicated his life to crying for Jesus while he is on the cross. This is described as a very important person in Santiago, and traditionally a special boy is chosen young and dedicates his life to this charge; he must be unwed and lives from the offerings of the townspeople.

The procession itself: When all is ready, men line up on both sides of the coffin and begin the movement that defines Good Friday in Santiago: three steps forward, two steps back, swaying constantly, never quite seeming stable, moving through streets covered in alfombras. The procession of the Señor Sepultado, confirmed by the EFE news agency in its 2025 Good Friday coverage, departs from the 1547 church and travels the village streets, pausing for two full hours in front of the atrio of the church. This two-hour station in the sun is an act of penitencia and gratitude. The image of Christ is carried by indigenous men in red shirts and white-and-red traditional Tz’utujil traje — the iconic short pants embroidered with birds and animals that are specific to Santiago. The women carrying the Virgin anda wear their traditional cortes and huipiles with purple lace mantillas. The andas are decorated with bright flowers of every color.

Following the procession, the route continues toward the four small capillas of the village. In the Tz’utujil cosmovision, these four chapels represent the four corners of the universe. The procession will travel slowly to all four, and will continue all night long.

The arrival of Maximón: After a long afternoon in the hot sun, at approximately 4:00 PM — when the time is right and the crowd has reached a particular state of absorption — the telinel of the Cofradía Santa Cruz emerges with Maximón on his back. The santiagoatitlan.com source is precise about this: “Maximón basically comes out of his little chapel and steals the show.” Every eye in the plaza is on him. The community watches closely to see how well the telinel dances the Maximón bundle — a skilled, spiritually strong telinel will dance for a long time, working the crowd in a way that has nothing to do with entertainment and everything to do with spiritual power. He dances around the other figures in the scene, joins the procession behind the casket, and then, when he has done what he came to do, runs back to the cofradía.

It is worth saying plainly what this moment is: a Maya spiritual figure literally joins a Catholic procession of the burial of Christ, walking behind the coffin to the sound of rattles and a drum, moving back and forth in a rhythm that is entirely pre-Columbian in origin. The two halves of this community’s spiritual life converge in the same street. It is not a conflict. It is a completion.

After Maximón returns to the cofradía, he is set up in splendor among the other bundles and statues and the cofradía parties for the rest of the week. The procession of Jesus’s casket continues on its way all night to the four corners of the universe.

Where to stand: For the procession, aim to be on the main street between the church and the first part of the route by 9:00 AM at the latest. The two-hour station in front of the church gives everyone good viewing time, but the streets fill as the day progresses. For the arrival of Maximón in the afternoon, the church plaza is where to be — the chapel is on the side of the church, and the moment he emerges is visible from the plaza.

Food on Good Friday: Santiago’s street food scene on Good Friday is at its most intense. Vendors line the path from the dock all the way into the village. Traditional foods are everywhere — torrejas, atol, tamales, garnachas, chuchitos. The fruit from the alfombras — some of which is distributed or sold as the week winds down — also appears in the market. Eat as you walk. This is one of the great days for Guatemalan street food anywhere in the country.

For everything to eat and look for, [LINK: Traditional Guatemalan Semana Santa Foods: A Complete Guide] covers the full culinary landscape of Holy Week.

Holy Saturday — Santiago Returns to the Church

Holy Saturday is quieter in Santiago Atitlán in the way that days after catharsis are always quieter. The village has spent itself. The cosmic work of the week has been done.

The notable event of Holy Saturday is the return of the patron saint. At around 3:00 PM, according to the santiagoatitlan.com schedule, Santiago Apóstol — the patron of the town — is brought from his cofradía to the church. This is a significant moment in the calendar of the cofradía system: the patron returns to the church after his week in the ceremonial houses.

For visitors, Holy Saturday in Santiago is the day to do what Good Friday’s energy made impossible: walk the village at leisure, buy from the market, sit in the plaza, visit the church, and let everything you have seen settle. The alfombras have been walked over and swept away. The bowers of fruit overhead are starting to age. The streets feel wide and open in a way they have not all week.

If you can stay a second night in Santiago, Holy Saturday evening in the village is genuinely lovely — quiet, warm, smelling of the week’s incense and flowers, with the lake flat and the volcanoes visible in the late light.

Easter Sunday — Resurrection, Departure, and the Marimba

Easter Sunday in Santiago has a different character entirely from the days that came before. The mood is lighter, actively celebratory. Fireworks go off. The church fills for early mass.

The santiagoatitlan.com source notes that there is not very much about the resurrection in the Maya Easter story — the emphasis of the week was on the sacrifice and the earth, not on the sky god’s return. But the Catholic Easter Sunday celebrations are observed, and in the morning Maximón leaves his chapel to return to his cofradía, where he will remain for the rest of the year.

By Easter Sunday afternoon the lake begins its mass departure — Guatemalan families who came for the week, international visitors, day-trippers from Antigua. If you are leaving, go early. The docks in Santiago and the lanchas to Panajachel fill up, and the roads from Panajachel toward Antigua and Guatemala City get congested by mid-afternoon.

Quick Reference Schedule

All times are approximate (más o menos) — nothing in Santiago Atitlán runs on a fixed clock, and the ceremonies begin when they are ready.

What Makes Santiago Different from Every Other Semana Santa

People sometimes ask whether they should choose Antigua or Santiago for Holy Week. This is the wrong question. They are not competing versions of the same thing. They are different things entirely.

Antigua’s Semana Santa is the Baroque Catholic tradition of Spain transplanted to the Americas and amplified over four centuries. The alfombras are precision works of colored sawdust and flowers. The andas weigh tons and require hundreds of cucuruchos in purple robes. The processions are enormous, solemn, and organized to the minute. It is overwhelming and magnificent, and if you have not seen it, it belongs on your list.

Santiago’s Semana Santa is something that Antigua cannot offer: a living Maya cosmological ceremony. The sacrifice and resurrection of a sky god, the temporary reign of an earth deity, the return of the rains, the opening of the agricultural cycle — all of this is happening simultaneously with the Catholic observances, and not as a folk embellishment but as the core spiritual engine of what the week means. Nowhere else in Guatemala will you witness this so openly. Nowhere else will you see Maximón join the procession of Christ.

For the historical and cultural context behind all of this, [LINK: Semana Santa in Guatemala: Traditions and History] traces how these regional traditions developed from their colonial origins to the present.

Practical Tips for Semana Santa in Santiago Atitlán

Hire a local guide. This is not a suggestion — it is the single most important thing you can do for your experience in Santiago, especially during Holy Week. A knowledgeable local guide transforms cryptic ceremonies into legible meaning, opens doors to cofradías that are otherwise closed to uninitiated visitors, and allows you to ask the questions that would otherwise go unanswered. Atitlán Living lists trusted guides including Dolores Ratzan (a member of the Cofradía Santa Cruz who speaks English) and Miguel Pablo Sicay. Contact them in advance, especially if you want to participate in a ceremonial visit to Maximón.

Book accommodation two to three months ahead. Hotel Bambu, Hotel Tiosh Abaj, and Casa Josefa Hotel all book out completely for Holy Week, and minimum night stays of three to five nights are standard. If you wait until the last month, you will find nothing.

Bring cash. Santiago has limited ATM infrastructure. Come prepared.

Dress modestly everywhere. No bare shoulders, no short skirts or shorts, not in the church, not near the cofradías, not during processions. This is not optional etiquette — it is a basic expression of respect for where you are and what is happening around you.

Don’t walk on alfombras. At any point before a procession has passed over them, alfombras are sacred offerings. Walking on one before the procession is a genuine breach of respect that will not be forgotten.

Stay for more than one day. If you can only do one day in Santiago, make it Good Friday. But if you can stay through Holy Thursday to Easter Sunday, you will see the week as a complete whole rather than as a spectacular fragment.

Be patient. Nothing here runs on schedule. The procession starts when it starts. Maximón appears when the telinel is ready. The ceremony at midnight begins when the ceremonies are ready. Bring this patience with you before you arrive, not as something you have to find once you are frustrated.

On Good Friday, arrive before 8 AM. Day-trippers from Panajachel and Antigua start arriving by midday. The village before 9 AM is incomparably more intimate than the village at noon.

Beyond Semana Santa: What Else to Do in Santiago Atitlán

If you have time beyond the Holy Week ceremonies, Santiago Atitlán has more to offer than most visitors discover.

The Cojolya Association runs excellent weaving workshops showing the traditional Tz’utujil backstrap loom technique — the textiles of Santiago, with their distinctive bird motifs, are among the most beautiful in the country. The Mujeres de Maiz cooperative is another option for direct, meaningful engagement with the textile tradition.

The market — busiest on Fridays and Sundays — is not a tourist market. It is a genuine working market where local women come from the surrounding communities to buy and sell. Go without an agenda and simply walk it.

The Iglesia Parroquial Santiago Apóstol rewards multiple visits. The more you know about it — about the brothers who repainted the altarpiece to embed Maya cosmology inside a colonial church, about Father Stanley Rother’s murder and the community’s response, about the wooden saints dressed annually in new clothes by local women — the more you see each time you enter.

For families traveling with children during Holy Week, Santiago is manageable and genuinely engaging — the lancha ride, the bowers of fruit, the market, the colors. See [LINK: Best Things to Do with Kids at Lake Atitlán] for broader ideas around the lake.

For active travelers, the village near San Antonio Palopó on the eastern shore is worth a day trip by lancha — a more remote, deeply traditional community with its own textiles and a beautiful church. See our guide to [LINK: Visiting San Antonio Palopó] for what to expect. And for the complete overview of what Santiago and the whole lake have to offer across all seasons, [LINK: Complete Guide to Visiting Lake Atitlán] is the place to start.

Frequently Asked Questions

When is Semana Santa in Santiago Atitlán in 2026? Holy Week runs from Palm Sunday, March 29, through Easter Sunday, April 5, 2026. The most important day in Santiago Atitlán is Good Friday, April 3. Palm Saturday (March 28) marks the arrival of the fruit from Chicacao and the start of traditional ceremonies.

Do I need to speak Spanish to visit Santiago Atitlán during Holy Week? Basic Spanish helps, especially at the market and for navigating the village. In the cofradías and with older community members, Tz’utujil is the primary language. A local guide who speaks English and either Spanish or Tz’utujil is the best solution.

Is it respectful for non-Maya, non-Catholic visitors to attend? Yes, if you come with genuine curiosity and respect. The cofradía system in Santiago has historically been open to visitors, and the ceremonies are not secret (with specific exceptions like the Tuesday night dressing of Maximón). The key is showing up with humility, following local norms, not photographing without permission, not walking on alfombras, and recognizing that you are a guest in someone else’s spiritual life.

What should I bring to visit Maximón? An offering: a pack of cigarettes, veladoras (glass pillar candles), flowers, or a small bottle of aguardiente. A small cash donation (around Q5 to Q10) to the cofradía. And the willingness to spend time rather than rushing. For the full practical guide, see [LINK: Maximón: Everything You Need to Know About Guatemala’s Most Fascinating Figure].

How crowded does Santiago Atitlán get on Good Friday? Busy, but nothing like Antigua. By midday on Good Friday, the village is noticeably crowded with Guatemalan and international day-trippers. The experience before 9 AM is intimate and local. The experience at noon is tourist-adjacent. This is why staying the night before is the single best logistical decision you can make.

Can I combine Santiago Atitlán and Antigua in the same Holy Week trip? Yes, and it can work very well. Many people do the early days of Holy Week in Antigua (Palm Sunday through Holy Wednesday) and then travel to the lake for Holy Thursday through Easter Sunday. For more on combining the two, see [LINK: Holy Week in Guatemala 2026: Key Dates, Major Processions, and What to Expect].

Also in this series: [LINK: Holy Week at Lake Atitlán: Semana Santa in Guatemala’s Most Spiritual Setting] | [LINK: Semana Santa Itinerary at Lake Atitlán: How to Plan Your Holy Week] | [LINK: Maximón: Everything You Need to Know About Guatemala’s Most Fascinating Figure] | [LINK: Traditional Guatemalan Semana Santa Foods: A Complete Guide] | [LINK: How to Photograph Semana Santa in Guatemala] | [LINK: Holy Week in Guatemala 2026: Key Dates, Major Processions, and What to Expect] | [LINK: Semana Santa in Guatemala: Traditions and History] | [LINK: Complete Guide to Visiting Lake Atitlán] | [LINK: Best Things to Do with Kids at Lake Atitlán] | [LINK: Visiting San Antonio Palopó]