The highlight of Antigua's entertainment calendar is its Carnival , a colourful, exuberant party held for ten days, from late July until the first Tuesday in August. Warm-ups start in early July, with steel bands, calypsonians and DJ's in action across the island, and Carnival proper gets cracking with the opening of Carnival City at the Antigua Recreation Ground in St John's. This is where all of the scheduled events take place, though you'll often find spontaneous outbreaks of partying across the city, and a festival village is set up nearby to provide space for the masses of food and drink vendors who emerge out of nowhere.

The major Carnival events take place over the last weekend and you'll have to cancel sleep for a few days of frantic action. The Panorama steel-band contest (Fri night) and the Calypso Monarch competition (Sun night) are both packed and definitely worth catching, while on the Monday morning - the day on which the islands celebrate slave emancipation in 1834 - Jouvert (pronounced "jouvay", and meaning daybreak) is a huge jump-up party starting at 4am. The Judging of the Troupes and Groups competition in the afternoon sees ranks of brightly costumed marching bands and floats parading through the city streets, being marked for colour, sound and general party attitude.

Tuesday has a final costumed parade through the streets, finishing with the announcement of all of the winners and a roughly 6pm-midnight last lap from Carnival City - "the bacchanal" - as the exhausted partygoers stream through St John's, led by the steel bands. All in all, it's a great event - certainly one of the best of the Caribbean's summer carnivals - and a great chance to catch the Antiguans in a nonstop party mood