Feast · Saturday, December 12, 2026
Our Lady of Guadalupe, December 12
The feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the Americas, falls on Saturday, December 12, 2026. Its novena runs December 3–11, and it remembers the four days in December 1531 when the Mother of God appeared to St Juan Diego outside Mexico City.
The story
On Saturday, December 9, 1531, Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, a widowed Indigenous convert, was walking past the hill of Tepeyac on his way to Mass when a young woman, dressed like an Aztec princess and speaking his own language, Nahuatl, called him by name. She told him she was the Virgin Mary and asked him to go to the bishop, Juan de Zumárraga, and ask for a church to be built on that spot.
The bishop, kindly but unconvinced, asked for a sign. Juan Diego's uncle, Juan Bernardino, fell gravely ill, and on December 12 Juan Diego took a different road to fetch a priest, hoping to avoid her. She met him on it anyway. She told him his uncle was already healed, and sent him to the top of the hill, where he found Castilian roses blooming in the December frost. She arranged them in his tilma, his cloak of cactus fiber. When he opened it before the bishop, the roses fell to the floor and her image was on the cloth.
When she found him on the road, she said, in words recorded in the Nahuatl account published in 1649:
Am I not here, I who am your mother?
The tilma hangs above the altar of the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, one of the most visited Catholic shrines in the world. Juan Diego was canonized in 2002; his feast is December 9.
The image
She stands before the sun, on a crescent moon, borne by an angel, her mantle covered in stars, her head bowed and her hands joined in prayer. She is clearly not a goddess but one who prays. The black sash at her waist was, to the people who first saw it, the sign of a woman with child — which is why she is so widely invoked for the unborn.
The novena, December 3–11
The Novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe begins on Thursday, December 3, 2026 and ends on the eve of the feast. Pray the full nine-day novena →
Customs
- Las Mañanitas — the birthday song, sung to her at midnight or at dawn on December 12, often with mariachis.
- Roses brought to her image in church, recalling the roses in the tilma.
- Matachines and other traditional dances outside the church, and processions with her image.
- Pilgrimage to the Basilica in Mexico City, or to a local shrine.
Our Lady of Guadalupe questions
When is the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe 2026?
Saturday, December 12, 2026.
Is Our Lady of Guadalupe a holy day of obligation?
Not in the United States, where December 12 is a feast; it is a much-loved day to go to Mass all the same. In Mexico it is kept with even greater solemnity.
When does the Guadalupe novena start in 2026?
Thursday, December 3, ending Friday, December 11, the eve of the feast.
What happened at Guadalupe?
In December 1531, on the hill of Tepeyac near Mexico City, the Virgin Mary appeared to an Indigenous man, Juan Diego, and asked for a church to be built there. When the bishop asked for a sign, she sent Juan Diego to gather roses blooming out of season; when he opened his cloak, or tilma, before the bishop on December 12, her image was on it. The tilma hangs in the Basilica of Guadalupe today.
Why is she patroness of the Americas?
Pope Pius XII called her Empress of the Americas in 1945, and St John Paul II named her patroness of all America in 1999, which is why her feast is kept throughout the continent.
The Guadalupe novena and twelve others in the app, with a reminder each day and a place for your intention.
