In a matter of little more than a decade, Zipolite has grown from a sleepy hippy village with a nude beach to a mythical destination that appears on the bucket lists of more and more clothes-free travellers around the world. “Did someone say Cap d’Agde? That’s sooooo 2010… Zipolite is the new naked hot spot!”.
The popularity of Zipolite has a lot to do with its yearly Nudist Festival, which started back in 2016 with maybe a few hundred mostly local nudists. In the last years, many thousands from all over the world have flown into Mexico for several days of nude activities. But we are not among them.
Zipolite Nudist Festival 2020
From the title of this blog post, you probably already imagined that we are about to drop a number of reasons why one may not want to go to the festival. And you’re right. But just for the record, we have actually been to one edition, back in 2020, and it definitely was not a negative experience.
The best thing about the festival is that it brings people together, people from all over the world with a similar mindset. And everyone is in a festival mood, making it easy to connect and meet new friends. Just like at music festivals, there’s a sense of camaraderie that’s hard to put into words. We’re all there for the same reason, and that creates a bond. It’s like the entire town becomes one big, happy, clothes-free family for several days.
You are also being entertained. There are a bunch of activities going on, most of them not much different from what you can find in a mid-sized European resort, like volleyball, yoga, or body painting, but there is nude whale watching too, and as far as we know, that can not be done anywhere else in the world. Although there are some side hustles organised by independent people, the activities organised by the festival committee are also 100% free. Knowing this, you’re probably about to raise an eyebrow when you read the next title.
The Zipolite Nudist Festival is expensive
When we talk about holidays in Mexico, many of you will immediately think of the Riviera Maya (also known as Cancun, its major city) or Baja California. Super touristy areas where the prices of food, drinks, and accommodation are very similar to Europe, Canada, or the USA. Zipolite is not like that. The first time we visited we stayed in a private seaside room for about $25 USD per night. Although the accommodation prices have meanwhile gone up, it’s still possible to find decent accommodation for less than $50 USD.
But not during the festival. Most places in town sell out months in advance and it’s very common for regulars of the festival to immediately book for next year while they are there. Hotel prices triple or quadruple, competing with those in Tulum. For the price of a 4-night stay during the festival, we can stay in town for weeks during the low season.
Shops and restaurants like to make some extra profit during the festival too. We can’t blame them, it’s the law of supply and demand at work but we always wonder whether it’s worth it. How much are we willing to pay more to be here during these 4 days, instead of the other 361 of the year?
We like our beers ice-cold
From unofficial statistics, we’ve learned that Zipolite counts between 500 and 1000 inhabitants. Add to that a couple of thousands of tourists during high season and you get an idea of what the town is used to cater to. During the festival, several additional thousands come to town, as well as people who booked a hotel in the nearby villages of San Agustinillo, Mazunte, and Puerto Angel.
Throughout the four days of the festival, we found it almost impossible to find an ice-cold beer. Not in the shops and neither in the bars. This is just a wild guess, but we think that there just aren’t enough fridges in town. This place just wasn’t built to accommodate so many people at once and the cost of buying or hiring extra fridges may not weigh up to the profit. People will buy beer anyway and after a while, they are already happy when it’s not lukewarm.
This is not “our” Zipolite
We fell in love with Zipolite years ago, for a variety of reasons, but the most important was the vibe of the town. A relaxed hippy village that almost seems lawless. A place where everyone can be themselves, where nobody cares about appearance or attitude. A nude beach where you can choose for a vibrant atmosphere near Shambala or a chill vibe further away if you’re more in a have a nap or read a book kind of mood. A place we would go to for a couple of days, and almost without noticing, end up staying for a month.
During the festival, this totally changes. The town is packed, it’s hard to find a table at our favourite restaurants and there’s noise everywhere. Suddenly, it becomes a lot about seeing and being seen and the usual relaxed energy turns into something electric. Even excentric maybe.
Zipolite transforms from the off-grid hidden gem into a mainstream beach destination as we have found many around the world. It’s a nude one though, and that’s still quite unique, but for us, this vibe just isn’t Zipolite.
Prove us wrong
Given its current popularity, we get a lot of questions about the Nudist Festival. When people ask us whether it’s worth going, we always say: “Absolutely, at least for once”. It is one of the largest nudist gatherings in the world and it’s just something you should see. Something you should experience. So head into the sweaty crowds, fight for a table, and drink not-so-cold beers. Just know that this is not the Zipolite you’ll find outside of these 4 days.
We imagine you nodding in agreement while you are reading this, thinking back to the days when Zipolite was still an oasis of peace and quietness. Or maybe you’ve hardly managed to keep yourself from punching the screen just because our faces are on it, shouting “What are these two idiots saying?”. That’s totally fine. Keep in mind that this whole blog post is based on just one experience. We’ve seen the festival in 2020 and decided that once is enough.
If you have experienced it as well, we would like to hear your opinion. Do you feel the same? Or maybe the other 361 days are just not “your” Zipolite?
By the way, our friend Angy, who you may remember from some of our videos, was at the 2025 edition of the Zipolite Nudist Festival and she recently started her own blog. So here’s a shout-out to Angy: How about you prove us wrong on your blog? Or maybe prove us right…
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We attended this year’s Zipolite nudist festival for the first time, and we’ve yet to leave. We’re some of those people who come for a short stay and find themselves here for an extended time…
While we had a good time, we didn’t love the atmosphere during the event. Like seemingly all nudist festivals, it’s poorly organized with poor dissemination of events for festival goers, and it ends up just being a naked boozefest for many. Some may love this, but we don’t.
We will likely not make a special trip to attend again. We will discuss this in an upcoming video about our time at the 2025 festival.
Now that it’s calmed down in Zipolite and back to what I’m guessing is normal, we are loving it here and keep extending our stay. Perhaps we’ll never leave…
Ha! That’s great to hear! We also hear that the atmosphere during the event hasn’t exactly improved over the years.
With respect to the organisers, we know several of them personally and they put their hearts and souls into organising this (not to mention their time and effort) but they get no support from the municipality and we think that it has grown a bit too fast for them as well.
We’ll definitely be back to Zipolite this year or the next, maybe you’ll still be there
My first visit to Zipolite was during this year’s festival. There was a pervasive air of sexuality in the air. I went to the opening party, an official event sponsored by the festival, and there were inflatable penises and it seemed like a party for gay men to find hook ups.
If you sit on the beach after sunset men may stealthily approach getting closer and closer until you tell them you’re not interested. There were numerous situations that made me uncomfortable.
I wouldn’t go back during the festival but will try a visit to the zipolite again at another time.
This air of sexuality is stimulated intentionally or unintentionally by the organizers. The logo of the festival is two inflatable dolls, the man of which is clearly in an aroused state. This may attract people with specific intentions and is no good promotion of naturism.
Yeah, the male doll was a bit unfortunate, but we’re sure that this wasn’t the intention. Probably it just wasn’t very easy to find a inflatable naked dolls in Mexico.
The real reason why people “with specific intentions” are attracted is the internet. Other than in naturist circles, Zipolite has more and more become a popular gay and swingers destination.
Sorry to hear that, but remember what we said, Zipolite during the festival is not the “real” Zipolite
We went in 2022. The festival had been “officially cancelled” by authorities due to Covid restrictions, but the Mexican Naturist Federation (I think I got that name right) still threw the party, though there weren’t any music acts. Because of that not as many people showed up, although accommodations did sell out. We stayed on the less crowded eastern end of the beach and walked to the parties at Hotel Nude and Budamar. Never had a problem getting a table or cold beer. We fell in love with Zipolite and want to return but really don’t care if we go to another festival there again.
Starting from at least 2019, the Nudist Federation of Mexico (Spanish acronym FNM) had no hand in organizing the Festival, although there might have been some collaboration up to 2020. The Festival was a personal project of Juan Castañeda (president of the FNM until 2018) and Jair Flores (manager at Hotel Nude), with later involvement by Mercedes Aguilar.
¡Hola Gerardo! ¿Como esta?
Thank you for clearing that up. I didn’t look up my notes and was going off memory (bad idea!). Also, I re-read my comment and felt it sounded negative about the festival. We had a really good time at it, met a lot of great people and would have loved to experience the event without the Covid restrictions. Like Nick and Lins, we also like peaceful beach experiences, which is why I said we didn’t care if we went to another festival there. But we’d rather hang out with hundreds of nudists on a beach than hundreds of textiles!
Hi, Scott! I’m fine, thanks for asking! FWIW, Rosario and I did not go to the Festival this year, either! We thought presenting it as the 10th Festival was stretching the truth quite a bit, and I had to laugh at the “10th anniversary dinner” that was organized, considering only 9 years have passed since the 6th ELAN in 2016, which, as I pointed out before, was in no way, shape or form the first Festival.
In a way, the festival has also become a meeting point for people around the world who always show up in Zipolite around those dates. And that is a really fun thing. There are rumours that the festival may not happen in 2026, but many people have already booked for the last weekend of January/the first of february. So even with no festival, there will be lots of people and quite some vibe.
Nick and Lins: Your claim that Zipolite’s “Nudist Festival […] started back in 2016 with maybe a few hundred mostly local nudists” is incorrect. What happened in 2016 in Zipolite was the 6th ELAN (Latin American Naturist Encounter), and there were fewer than one hundred attendees. A different group, VidaNud, had its own yearly excursion, that included a few dozen attendees, during the same weekend at the end of January. The Festival as such didn’t happen until 2017. Jair Flores, who at the time was managing the Nude hotel, had unsuccessfully tried to hold a “Festival Nudista Zipolite” starting in 2014. The success of the 6th ELAN was what gave the Festival the momentum it needed to take off.
You shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet
But you’re absolutely right, this part wasn’t thoroughly researched but written based on stories we remember. Apparently the memories were a bit vague but we guess that this doesn’t influence the point we’re trying to make.