The festive amazon was formally described in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus, in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae.

[3] The festive amazon is now one of around thirty species placed in the genus Amazona that was introduced by the French naturalist René Lesson in 1830.

[4][5] The genus name is a Latinized version of the name Amazone used in the 18th century by the Comte de Buffon.

Although it has declined locally, it remains fairly common throughout a large part of its range and can even be seen near cities such as Manaus and Iquitos.

Consequently, it was considered to be of least concern by BirdLife International and IUCN, though it was uplisted to vulnerable in 2012, due to models of deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest and its susceptibility to hunting, which predicts that the population will decline rapidly over the next three generations.