Each year during Mardi Gras, approximately 1.4 million visitors take to the streets of New Orleans to participate in the city’s iconic Fat Tuesday parades and festivities. There is a story and a purpose behind everything you’ll experience during Carnival Time – from the king cake you’ll eat to the flambeaux who light the parades at night. The legacy of Mardi Gras can be traced to European Carnival celebrations during the 17th and 18th centuries. Carnival has traditionally been celebrated as a debaucherous prelude to Lent, a six-week-long religious fast observed before Easter.

Carnival celebrations officially start on January 6, a date referred to in the Christian calendar as the Twelfth Night because it marks the end of the Twelve Days of Christmas (and hence the holiday season). Every year, Carnival season kicks off on this date at sundown, followed by a weeks-long schedule of lively parades and street parties put on across the city by famous Mardi Gras krewes and New Orleans marching bands. The festivities continue on weekends and various weekdays until Fat Tuesday, also known as Shrove Tuesday, which falls on a different day each year. This year it will fall on 25 February 2020.