Spain’s world-famous San Fermín festival in Pamplona (Navarra) came to an end on Tuesday, after its eighth and final bull run left 10 participants injured, including an 86-year-old British man. It brought the total number of injuries recorded during this year’s event to 57.
Regional authorities said two Spanish men suffered gore wounds during the final encierro, while a further eight runners were treated in hospital for injuries ranging from bruises to falls.
The British participant, from Halesowen in England’s West Midlands, was taken to hospital after suffering injuries to his right hand, left elbow and right eyebrow. Festival officials said he was undergoing medical assessment but was not believed to have been seriously hurt. ALSO READ: Vatican audience disrupted by anti-bullfighting activists before pope’s Spain trip.
The most serious injuries of the morning were sustained by an 18-year-old man from Pamplona, who was gored in the left thigh on the first bend of the course after a charging bull ploughed into a small group of runners, knocking two men onto the cobblestones and flipping another over its horns.
A second victim, a 46-year-old man from Guadalajara in central Spain, suffered a horn wound to the chest on the final stretch as the route narrowed before entering the city’s bullring. Neither man was reported to be in a critical condition.
Every morning during the eight-day festival, hundreds of participants – the overwhelming majority of them men – dressed in the traditional white clothing and red neckerchiefs sprint ahead of six fighting bulls and accompanying steers through the narrow streets of Pamplona’s medieval old quarter. ALSO READ: Spain advances legal reform to ban minors from attending or taking part in bullfighting.
This year’s final run saw the animals complete the 848.6-metre route from the holding pens to the bullring in just two minutes and 25 seconds, with their speed once again catching many runners by surprise as more than a thousand people crowded the course. The bulls are later used in afternoon bullfights featuring some of Spain’s leading matadors.
Four runners were gored during this year’s festival, including a 30-year-old Spanish man who suffered a horn wound to the face earlier in the celebrations. Of the 57 people injured over the eight days, five were foreign nationals: two Britons, an Australian, an American and a German runner who was gored in the left arm.
Many of the injuries sustained during the annual event are caused not by direct contact with the bulls but by falls and crushes as inexperienced runners and tourists become caught up in the dense crowds.
Known in Spain as Sanfermines, the festival honours Saint Fermín, co-patron saint of the Navarra region, and attracts visitors from around the world each July.
This year’s celebrations also marked the centenary of the publication of Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises, the book widely credited with introducing the San Fermín festival to an international audience. The novel tells the story of a group of American and British expatriates who travel to Pamplona for the festivities.
With the bull runs finished, the festival itself concluded with its traditional closing ceremony at midnight on 14 July.
Despite its reputation for danger, fatalities are rare. Sixteen people have died during the bull runs since official records began in 1911. The most recent fatality occurred in 2009, when 27-year-old Daniel Jimeno Romero, from Alcalá de Henares near Madrid, was fatally gored in the neck and lung. ALSO READ (2/2/2021): Opinion: why bullfights should stay cancelled after Covid-19.
Enjoying the news from Spain in English? Add us as a preferred news source in Google.
Subscribe to the Weekly Newsletter from Spain in English.
🐂🔻 Último encierro de los #Sanfermines2026 con los astados de Jandilla
— SanferminesPamplona (@SFesPamplona) July 14, 2026
🎉 #SF26 #SanferminesPamplona #Sanferminak2026 pic.twitter.com/ySGtfJoPZT
Click here to get your business activity or services listed on our DIRECTORY.