Siloy Festival, Alcoy (2026 Guide): Cebu's Endemic Bird Festival

TL;DR: Siloy Festival is Alcoy’s town fiesta, held the last Saturday of August (August 29, 2026), built around the siloy (black shama), a Cebu-endemic bird upgraded to Least Concern by the IUCN in February 2025. Free to watch; also honors St. Rose of Lima. About 3-4 hours from Cebu City by bus. Verified July 2026.

Most Cebu town fiestas exist for a patron saint or a harvest. Alcoy’s Siloy Festival exists, at least in part, for a bird — a small, elusive, long-tailed songbird called the siloy that lives nowhere else on Earth except the forested spine of Cebu island, with Alcoy’s own Nug-as Forest holding the species’ largest known population. That alone makes it one of the more distinctive festivals on the province’s calendar, and the timing lines up with genuine conservation news: the bird’s global status was upgraded in early 2025 after years of habitat protection work, much of it centered on Alcoy’s own forest. Getting there runs about 3-4 hours from Cebu City by bus, roughly ₱150-200 (US$2.60-3.50). This guide covers what Siloy Festival actually celebrates, the bird and forest behind it, when it happens in 2026, and how to combine it with Alcoy’s other quiet south Cebu draws.

Siloy Festival 2026 at a Glance

Verified July 2026. Confirm the exact 2026 program with the Alcoy municipal tourism office or its official Facebook page as the date approaches.

What Is Siloy Festival?

Siloy Festival is Alcoy’s annual town celebration, launched in 2005 specifically to raise awareness of the black shama and build local support for protecting the forest it depends on. Locals call the bird “siloy” (also spelled “siloi”); its formal scientific name, Copsychus cebuensis, literally translates to “Cebuano blackbird.” It’s medium-sized with a distinctively long tail, and it wasn’t formally documented and studied until 1999, when conservation researchers began working in Alcoy’s highlands — a relatively recent “discovery” for a bird that had presumably lived there for generations, simply undercounted.

Alcoy holds the species’ largest known concentration, centered on the forested corridor around Barangay Nug-as, near the Alcoy-Boljoon boundary. That geography is the entire reason the festival exists: a town with an outsized share of a critically limited habitat, using its fiesta calendar to turn conservation into a civic identity.

Is the Siloy Still Endangered?

No — and this is recent, verified news, not old conservation talking points. In February 2025, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) upgraded the black shama’s Red List status from Endangered to Least Concern, based on updated province-wide surveys that put the total population at roughly 9,160 to 15,415 mature individuals, well above earlier estimates. Alcoy’s forest corridor held the highest recorded density in that survey.

“An upgrade means that the species’ population has improved, [and] better information is available to make a more informed decision,” said Lisa Paguntalan-Marte, Executive Director of the Philippine Biodiversity Conservation Foundation, Inc. (PBCFI), the organization that led the population surveys. The improvement is credited largely to community-based forest protection — including the kind of local stewardship Alcoy has built its festival around — though a “least concern” listing doesn’t mean the underlying forest habitat is safe from clearing; it means the bird itself has proven more resilient and adaptable than earlier counts suggested.

Where Does the Siloy Actually Live?

Its core habitat is the highland forest around Barangay Nug-as, part of one of the last old-growth forest blocks left in Cebu province. The most visitable protected patch is Nug-as Forest, roughly 40 hectares of centuries-old trees — including giant almaciga and molave specimens estimated at over 500 years old — reached by a guided uphill trek arranged through the local community, who work as forest guardians for the site. It’s a genuine rarity: a stand of primary forest that survived what leveled most of the rest of the island’s tree cover.

Don’t plan a trip around guaranteed sightings. Even the researchers running formal population surveys rely mostly on hearing the siloy’s call rather than spotting it — it’s a shy, forest-floor bird, not a showpiece species that poses for cameras. Go for the forest and the conservation story; treat an actual sighting as a bonus.

When Is Siloy Festival 2026?

The festival runs on the last Saturday of August every year, which puts the 2026 edition on Saturday, August 29. The 2025 celebration was confirmed for August 30 by the Cebu Provincial Tourism Office, consistent with the same last-Saturday pattern. Because the exact hour-by-hour program (parade start time, stage schedule) is set locally each year, confirm the specific 2026 details with the Alcoy municipal tourism office or its Facebook page as the date approaches.

Is Siloy Festival Also a Religious Fiesta?

Yes — it folds Alcoy’s patronal feast into the same celebration. St. Rose of Lima is Alcoy’s patron saint, and her feast day falls on August 23, about a week before the festival’s usual Saturday date. Rather than running two separate events, the town consolidates its religious fiesta and its conservation-themed civic festival into the same late-August window, which is part of why the festival carries both a bird-conservation identity and a standard small-town fiesta feel — pageants, street dancing, and church observances included.

What Happens During the Festival?

Expect a street dancing competition and showdown built around the bird and the town’s natural setting, plus the usual fiesta trade fair and civic program. Contingents perform choreography referencing the siloy, Alcoy’s forest, and its coastline, competing for the festival’s top prize. Around the plaza, expect food stalls, a trade fair showcasing local products, and civic presentations promoting both the Nug-as Forest conservation effort and Alcoy’s beaches. It’s a single-day event, smaller and more compact than multi-day fiestas in bigger south Cebu towns like Carcar or Argao.

How Do You Get to Alcoy from Cebu City?

Take a Ceres bus signboarded “Bato via Oslob” from the South Bus Terminal on V. Rama Avenue — it passes straight through Alcoy. Fare runs roughly ₱150-200 (about US$2.60-3.50), and the ride takes 3-4 hours, mostly due to frequent roadside pickups rather than distance — Alcoy is only about 92 km from Cebu City, closer than Oslob itself. A private van or rental car covers the same route in roughly 2-2.5 hours direct if you’d rather skip the bus stops.

Combine It With Alcoy’s Beach and Forest

Festival day aside, Alcoy rewards a proper look rather than a highway drive-through south. Tingko Beach is a kilometer of shallow, calm white sand that’s mostly free to enter, and works as a half-day stop on the same trip. If you have more time and can arrange a guide in advance, Nug-as Forest and the nearby Sea of Clouds viewpoint at Mt. Campetra reward an early start or an overnight stay nearby. Our Alcoy guide to Tingko Beach and Nug-as Forest covers fares, fees, and how to fit both into a longer south Cebu trip.

The Honest Take

Siloy Festival is small — a single Saturday, a town-scale crowd, no grandstand production — and that’s precisely what makes it worth knowing about if you care about the story behind it rather than just the spectacle. It’s one of the only Philippine town fiestas built around wildlife conservation rather than a saint or a harvest, and the underlying news (a real, recent, verified IUCN status upgrade) gives it more substance than most festival write-ups can claim. If you’re hoping for Sinulog-scale production values, this isn’t it. If you want a genuinely different reason to stop in a quiet south Cebu town on your way to Oslob, it’s worth timing your trip around.

If late August doesn’t work for your schedule, Alcoy’s beach and forest are worth visiting any time of year — you’ll just need to arrange the Nug-as Forest tour separately with local guides rather than relying on festival-day programming. See our best festivals in Cebu roundup for other options if you’re building an itinerary around fiesta season generally.

Getting the Rest of Your Trip Sorted

Alcoy has limited overnight options, so most visitors base themselves further along the coast. Compare hotels toward Oslob on Agoda if you want a base within easy reach of both Alcoy and the whale sharks further south. If you’d rather have transport and a forest guide arranged for you, check south Cebu day-tour listings on Klook or compare similar options on GetYourGuide.

Sources

• Siloy Festival — FestivalScape (festival overview, history)
• Experience the Siloy Festival 2025 in Alcoy — Cebu Provincial Tourism Office, Facebook (confirmed August 30, 2025 date)
• Endangered songbird from Cebu given improved conservation status — GMA News (February 2025 IUCN status upgrade, population figures, PBCFI quote)
• Black shama — Wikipedia (species background, endemic range)
• Dates and festival program cross-checked against 2025 reporting; confirm the exact 2026 activity schedule with the Alcoy municipal tourism office closer to the date. Verified July 2026.