Sitges, Barcelona province · Festival
For production companies, distributors, sales agents, brand-activation teams and festival sponsors that need apparel, booth giveaways, lead-capture gifts and VIP kits ready on stand during the October festival week on the Sitges seafront.
The Sitges Film Festival — Festival Internacional de Cinema Fantàstic de Catalunya — has run on the Sitges seafront since 1968 and is the longest-running fantasy, horror and science-fiction festival in the world. It is also an Oscar-qualifying competition for the short-film and feature-film awards. Each October the town receives several hundred accredited industry delegates, distributors, sales agents, press and a public audience running into the low six figures across the eleven-day programme.
The festival is a hybrid between a B2B market and a public festival. The morning-to-afternoon slots are dominated by industry screenings, sales-agent meetings and distribution panels in the Auditori and the Hotel Meliá Sitges; the evenings open onto the public red carpet, the Zombie Walk and the late-night screenings that have built the brand. That rhythm shapes a merch programme differently from a trade fair — apparel has to survive a long day of meetings, photo calls and crowded screenings, and the giveaway tier has to work for both an industry delegate and a festival fan walking out of a midnight slot.
Sitges is small and walkable, which is an advantage for last-mile logistics. Most venues, hotels and hospitality rooms sit within a fifteen-minute radius, and a single distribution partner can service the whole town by foot or with a small van. The festival's October window can also be wet — the Garraf coast gets a meaningful share of its annual rain in autumn — so any apparel mix should plan for a cool and damp climate, not a Mediterranean summer. Carrying a light branded outer layer is the difference between a comfortable promo day and a cold one on the seafront.
The festival's industry delegate profile is unusually international for a Catalan event: distributors, sales agents and press arrive from across the EU, the UK, North America and Latin America. A bilingual insert card (Spanish + English) reads cleanly to that mix, and a small Catalonia-specific detail on the apparel label helps the gift land as a regional token rather than a generic corporate giveaway.
For participating teams, the production plan usually splits into two streams: printed apparel and structured giveaways produced through an EU partner for cost, quality and the IVA framework, and a fast-turnaround Spanish-language packaging and labelling stream that runs through Madrid or Barcelona for the final assembly. Spain applies IVA 21% on B2B merch invoices and registers them through FACe / SII with the Agencia Tributaria (AEAT), so any EU or international supplier should be ready to invoice on a Spanish B2B basis with reverse-charge where applicable. For the wider festival industry context, see our brief on festival merchandise.
Branded T-shirts, polos and a light outer layer with size allocation matched to the role: greeters, sales agents, the photo-call team and the late-night screening host. Sitges in October is often cool and wet, so the third layer earns its slot. Allocate at least one spare per role to cover late-night shift changes.
Lanyards, badge holders, tote bags, enamel pins, eco bottles and stickered notebooks calibrated for an audience that moves between industry meetings and public screenings. Plan a 20–25% buffer over peak-hour footfall.
Compact power banks, charging cables and premium desk accessories reserved for the morning sales-agent slots and the industry-meetings lounge. The Sitges brief usually includes a compact, photo-friendly item that reads on a sales table.
Premium notebooks, drinkware and small-format gift boxes prepared by recipient tier and delivered by name to the festival's hospitality rooms, with the operator's brand mark and a clear Catalonia touch. The hospitality tier usually runs 30–80 units and should be staged separately from the public-facing giveaways.
Confirm artwork, quantities, packaging and the named on-site recipient before production. The exact venue name, stand number and on-site delivery window will be confirmed against the current exhibitor manual closer to the event, and the venue should never be treated as an unrestricted parcel address.
For a town this compact we usually recommend treating a Sitges hotel close to the festival perimeter as the primary drop, with a short hand-carry or small-van shuttle into the festival perimeter during the official setup window. That route keeps customs paperwork, security inspection overhead and last-mile handling risk on a known schedule, gives the team an unboxing window before the first industry screening, and avoids having stock wait in a delivery bay while the auditori is still being built. The Barcelona line of the Rodalies de Catalunya and the C-31 motorway are the usual last-leg routes from the Madrid production hub.
For participating teams that consolidate multiple Spanish festivals on a single yearly cycle, our bonded-warehouse option in Madrid can stage larger production runs that will eventually be re-shipped to other Spain-based shows across the calendar, with IVA handled through FACe / SII (AEAT) and EU intra-community reverse-charge applied where eligible.
A short note on labels and packaging: any Spanish-language text on apparel, sleeves, hangtags or inserts should pass a native-speaker review before print, especially when the brand mark is paired with Catalan or bilingual Spanish-English copy. Date format, NIF/CIF details on invoice paperwork, and any compliance language around gift composition (alcohol, food, cosmetics) should be locked with the AEAT legal counsel that supports the campaign. Many participating teams ask for a single bilingual inner-card per tier rather than two parallel localisations, which keeps the print budget flat while still meeting the audience expectation.
Sustainability and waste-management expectations at the festival have also tightened over the last several editions. Compostable lanyards, recycled-fibre tote bags and refillable bottles are now the default ask in the festival brief, and any plastic-heavy giveaways should be replaced before they get RFP-driven.
Eight to ten weeks is the safest window for international production and shipping into Sitges. Five to six weeks is workable for simpler item lists once stock and print methods are confirmed.
Only after the festival organiser confirms the setup window, freight route and named consignee. Most teams still prefer hotel or local-office delivery into Sitges town.
Yes. Staff apparel, general festival giveaways, qualified-lead gifts and VIP or speaker kits can be packed and labelled as separate allocations, with different delivery addresses if your team needs them split between the venue, a Sitges hotel and a Barcelona office.
Spain applies IVA 21% on B2B merch invoices, registered through FACe / SII with the Agencia Tributaria (AEAT). EU intra-community reverse-charge applies where eligible.
No. Corp-Merch is an independent external supplier that helps participating companies prepare their own merch. It does not organise, sponsor or represent the festival.
Corp-Merch is an independent external supplier to participating companies. This page helps teams prepare their own merch for the festival; it does not represent the festival's organiser, the venues, the Garraf county authorities or any sponsor.