Editorial
Newsday
THE NORTH Stand’s going up. But so too are the mounting questions about Carnival 2026.
It’s Christmas time. For many, that’s their main focus right now.
However, the 2026 festival season will be short. And Carnival was launched on August 15 with a full calendar of events that are already in train.
Today, December 20, the Panorama Small Conventional semi-finals will be held at Victoria Square, Port of Spain. On December 17, panyards across the country were abuzz for the preliminaries.
Keiba Jacob Mottley, CEO of the National Carnival Commission (NCC), this week confirmed the North Stand’s going up as usual and is expected to be completed by mid-January.
Yet, the certainty embodied by the steel beams that support that iconic structure does not seem to be apparent in other areas of planning.
After August’s NCC launch, with its usual platitudes and tepid “You Go Love This” theme, a sense of policy drift seems to have set in.
There’s little discussion about things like the parade route for next February. Marketing efforts appear to have been limited to a flashy new website that was quietly launched. A proper press conference about prize money for marquee events hasn’t yet been held.
After Michelle Benjamin ordered an audit of spending in July, we’ve heard little about that matter.
The Minister of Culture in August tellingly spoke of a coming Inter-American Development Bank study “to measure how this national cultural product impacts our country’s ability to earn revenue.”
Meanwhile, we’re told the total budget this year is $137 million, which does not seem substantially different from the previous $140 million price tag. But the memories of Ms Benjamin’s bitter sparring with Emancipation Day stakeholders over funding are fresh.
Ms Mottley’s disclosure to this newspaper that the cost of the North Stand will be “almost 50 per cent less than the 2025 cost” is a sign of a push to tighten expenditure across the board in light of the minister’s public pronouncements.
Meanwhile, question marks loom given the Prime Minister’s clampdown on fetes at state facilities, which triggered a degree of scrambling and bad vibes. Other strong noise pollution measures targeting fireworks have recently been enacted.
In the same month Carnival was launched, there was also the abrupt cancellation of Independence Day events, with the government citing security concerns amid a state of emergency. The implications of that abrupt cancellation linger, even if the emergency may not.
Geopolitical tensions, including much speculation over US military build-ups and war, add a unique layer of uncertainty.
Nonetheless, stakeholders have been going about their business. Clearly, the NCC is one of them. After all, if Carnival stands for anything, it’s the idea that the show must go on.