Af­ter dom­i­nat­ing Spice­mas in 2025, sev­er­al Grena­di­an so­ca hits are tak­ing over Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions. So it’s no sur­prise the artistes flew over to give au­di­ences a di­rect taste of their coun­try’s Jab en­er­gy.

Car­ni­val Is Fash­ion 2 de­liv­ered an elec­tri­fy­ing show­case of cre­ativ­i­ty, at­tract­ing a larg­er au­di­ence than last year and trans­form­ing the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah Grand Stage in­to a vi­brant cel­e­bra­tion of fash­ion, mu­sic and mas­quer­ade.

Be­fore the book­ings, the ra­dio play and the in­ter­na­tion­al calls, San­dra Em­manuel, pop­u­lar­ly known as Queen Steam, said there were nights filled with tears, hunger and prayer.

There’s a huge chance your favourite pow­er so­ca tunes for 2026 were pro­duced by the same per­son. In fact, many be­lieve he has per­fect­ed the “for­mu­la.” From Bun­ji Gar­lin’s Still A Road Man and Machel Mon­tano’s En­core, to Mi­cal Te­ja and Patrice Roberts’ Cap­i­tal, Xplic­it­Mevon (Mevon Sood­een) is pow­er­ing through the 2026 Car­ni­val sea­son.

He would prob­a­bly not ap­prove of the com­par­i­son, but meet­ing pan con­nois­seur and his­to­ri­an Ian Franklin at a pa­n­yard the morn­ing af­ter com­pet­i­tive dra­ma is like mo­men­tar­i­ly oc­cu­py­ing li­brary space—soft, mea­sured tones, po­lite re­straint, and a vast­ness of read­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble knowl­edge and wis­dom.

These are un­doubt­ed­ly two of the most pop­u­lar lines for the 2026 Car­ni­val sea­son, cour­tesy of Full Blown’s hit song Re­spect­ful­ly Yours.

Be­fore he be­came the voice wak­ing up the na­tion on The Boom 94.1, Kwe­si “Su­pahype” Lee was al­ready telling Caribbean sto­ries—qui­et­ly, vi­su­al­ly, de­lib­er­ate­ly—through a cam­era lens.

Hav­ing to change the lo­ca­tion of a large-scale, all-in­clu­sive Car­ni­val event is no small task, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing a sea­son when large, sought-af­ter venues are booked quick­ly and of­ten months be­fore­hand.

As a graph­ic de­sign­er by train­ing, she has built a sol­id, 15-year ca­reer in graph­ic de­sign and al­so ex­pand­ed her cre­ativ­i­ty or­gan­i­cal­ly in­to fash­ion and cos­tume de­sign, where she has spent the last decade bring­ing char­ac­ters and con­cepts to life. Win­ches­ter is al­so a wife and moth­er of two, roles that, like her work, de­mand her en­er­gy, de­vot­ed pres­ence and con­stant care. A lover of colour, tex­ture and trav­el, her cre­ative jour­ney places vi­brance and evo­lu­tion at the core, and she has re­cent­ly tak­en her tal­ents in­to a new field with the cre­ation of her self-care jour­nal, Root­ed.

As a uni­ver­si­ty fo­cused on us­ing re­search for the up­lift­ment of its com­mu­ni­ty, The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine (UWI STA), the pre­mier ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tion in the re­gion, pro­duc­ing world-class schol­ars, be­lieves sci­ence should be ac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic. We are pleased to present our me­dia se­ries, UWI Sci­en­tists Speak. To­day, we hear from Dr Amy Dea­con and Pro­fes­sor In­dar Ram­nar­ine from the Fac­ul­ty of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy about their re­search on the Trinidad Gup­py.

For many women, painful pe­ri­ods have been con­sid­ered a nor­mal part of life. Young girls are of­ten told to “bear with it,” while old­er women silent­ly tol­er­ate dis­com­fort month af­ter month. But as a gy­nae­col­o­gist, I want to make one thing very clear: se­vere or dis­abling pe­ri­od pain is not nor­mal and should nev­er be ig­nored.

Colour My Fan­ta­sy J’Ou­vert band, which be­gan in 2012, con­tin­ues to build on its lega­cy of cul­tur­al re­vival and tra­di­tion­al Car­ni­val ex­pres­sion, ac­cord­ing to band spokesman Varoun Har­rimun­gal.