The short version
Sibiu is the bigger, better-known market. Craiova is the better-looking one, the cheaper one, and the one that is already open while you are still deciding.
If you can only do one and you want the famous Romanian Christmas market experience with the widest choice of stalls, go to Sibiu. If you want a market that is a designed spectacle rather than a shopping grid, with shorter queues and a materially smaller bill, go to Craiova. And if you are planning in early or mid-November, Craiova is the only one of the two that is actually running.
Checked October 2026. Craiova opens 13 November 2026 and runs to 3 January 2027. Sibiu, Bucharest and Brașov do not open until late November. Daily hours for Craiova's 2026 edition had not been published when we wrote this.
The fortnight that decides it
This is the argument most comparisons miss entirely.
Craiova opens about two weeks before everyone else. For roughly a fortnight in the middle of November, it is the only major Christmas market operating in Romania. That is not a marketing detail — it means a mid-November weekend break to a fully running market, with the lights on and the installation complete, at accommodation rates that have not yet moved.
Sibiu in mid-November is a lovely town with no market in it.
If your dates are flexible, this single fact settles the question.
Places in this piece
Size and choice
Sibiu wins here and it is not close. It is the oldest and best-established market in the country, with more stalls, more craft producers and a bigger programme of events. If what you want is to browse for two hours and buy presents, Sibiu has the inventory.
Craiova is smaller. You will walk the whole thing in forty minutes. Whether that is a drawback depends on whether you came to shop or to look.
Setting, and why Craiova surprises people
Sibiu's market sits in the Large Square, surrounded by a Saxon old town — historic, handsome, and the reason the town is on every list.
Craiova does something different. The market runs the length of Calea Unirii, a Belle Époque boulevard, with the Administrative Palace floodlit at the end of the axis and the fountains in front of it. The city commits to a full themed build — 2026 is *Tărâmul elfilor*, the Land of the Elves — rather than arranging huts in a square. It has twice topped European media rankings of Christmas markets on the strength of that.
Those rankings are press rankings, not awards, and we would rather say so than quote them as a verdict. But the difference in approach is real: Sibiu is a market in a beautiful place, Craiova is a designed installation.
Where to stay nearby
Live prices and availability on a map centred on this exact spot — hotels, apartments and hostels, so you can judge the walk from here rather than guess from an address.
Bookings made through this map earn us a commission. Your price is unaffected.
Price
Craiova is cheaper on every line, and the gap is widest on accommodation. A December bed in Sibiu is a national-tourism price; a December bed in Craiova is a regional one, and in mid-November it is barely a seasonal one at all.
Food and drink are also cheaper, though less dramatically. The detail is in what the Craiova market costs and where to stay for it.
Crowds
Sibiu in December is extremely busy, and the two weekends before Christmas are close to unpleasant. Craiova is busy on the same dates but on a different scale, and the queues are shorter.
With small children this matters more than anything else on this page — see the market with children.
What else is in the city
A market is one evening. What you do with the rest of the weekend is a fair tiebreaker.
Sibiu gives you a complete Saxon old town, the Brukenthal museum and the Transylvanian countryside.
Craiova gives you the Brâncuși collection at the Art Museum — including *The Kiss* of 1907 — Romanescu Park, and Oltenia within two hours, including the UNESCO-listed Brâncuși ensemble at Târgu Jiu, which is free and open at any hour.
The Brâncuși pairing is the strongest card Craiova holds and it has nothing to do with Christmas. If you are the kind of traveller for whom that matters, it decides the weekend.
Getting to each
Both are reachable from Bucharest in a few hours. Craiova is about 230 km on the A1 and DN65/DN6, and it has its own airport with Wizz Air on most routes — see Bucharest to Craiova and the airport guide.
Sibiu is further from Bucharest but closer to the Transylvanian circuit if you are already up there.
Doing both
They are not close together, and chaining them in one weekend is a lot of driving for two markets that both take an evening. If you want both, the sensible pattern is mid-November in Craiova and December in Sibiu — which also means two different kinds of trip rather than the same one twice.
The verdict
Go to Sibiu if you want the biggest and most famous, you are shopping, and your dates are in December anyway.
Go to Craiova if you want the better-looking one, you are watching the budget, you dislike crowds, you have small children, or you are travelling in the first half of November — when it is the only one open.
