Mardi Gras 2027 in New Orleans: Parade Schedule, Where to Stand and Where to Stay

Carnival before the parades start

Mardi Gras World is open year-round, 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. ($$). You can watch Carnival being physically built here, which makes it the first stop if you arrive outside the season. Group rates start at 20 people, online booking takes you up to 75, and bigger parties go through the sales office. The free downtown shuttle is not included on group tours.

The Presbytère (Jackson Square) is the Louisiana State Museum building beside St Louis Cathedral, Spanish colonial under a mansard roof ($). Its permanent exhibition, "Mardi Gras: It's Carnival Time in Louisiana", lays out the krewe system, the balls and the throws before you ever stand on a route. Upstairs, rhinestoned krewe ball gowns and feathered Black masking Indian suits fill tall glass cases. School and tour-group rates come by advance booking, and the galleries handle coach parties easily. Come here first if this is your first Carnival from abroad.

Backstreet Cultural Museum (1531 St Philip Street, Tremé) is a small storefront packed wall to wall with towering beaded and ostrich-plume Black masking Indian suits in pink, turquoise and gold, skull-and-bone gang costumes and jazz funeral sashes ($$). This is Black Carnival told by the people who mask. It reopened at the St Philip Street address after Hurricane Ida wrecked the old Henriette Delille building, so any listing still giving the old address is out of date. Groups run from four to 40 people. Parties of five or more pay $20 per person, with up to two free chaperones for larger groups. The museum also runs guided Second Line tours.

The walking parades and what they ask of you

Krewe du Vieux rolls at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday 23 January 2027 through the Marigny and the French Quarter, one of the very few parades still permitted inside the Quarter. Mule-drawn miniature floats carry crude hand-built satirical effigies, lit by flambeaux, squeezing down the narrow balconied streets behind the city's best brass bands. It stays deliberately small and hand-made, the satirical, pre-corporate end of Carnival. Standing is free and shoulder to shoulder. The content is obscene, and nobody should bring children.

La Société de Sainte Anne has marched every Mardi Gras since 1969. It gathers around Piety and Burgundy on Fat Tuesday morning and drifts towards the French Quarter, a loose river of hand-sewn feathered, mirrored and sequinned costumes moving on foot at 9 a.m. through the low pastel shotgun houses of Bywater, brass band in the middle. No floats roll and no barricades go up. You can walk in this one rather than watch it from the kerb, provided you are in costume, which is how everyone else gets in. A group in street clothes will stand out badly.

Muses, Endymion and Orpheus

Krewe of Muses parades on Thursday 4 February 2027, the all-female krewe whose satirical floats skewer the year's news. A giant illuminated red high-heeled shoe rides the route, and riders hand down individual hand-glittered and decoupaged stilettos into screaming hands. The decorated shoe is the throw locals chase hardest, and this is the best-humoured of the big parades. Street viewing is free. Grandstand seats for this one sell out before any other, so book a block early if your group wants to sit.

Krewe of Endymion rolls on Saturday 6 February 2027, its nine-unit "Pontchartrain Beach" tandem float snaking down Canal Street at night under mirrored fibre-optic lighting ($$$$). Afterwards the whole parade drives inside the Caesars Superdome bowl, past 20,000 people in black tie, for the Extravaganza. That is effectively the world's biggest indoor party, and one of the few Carnival balls the public can simply buy into. Tables and blocks go through the Endymion office.

Krewe of Orpheus takes Lundi Gras night, Monday 8 February 2027, founded by Harry Connick Jr. The Leviathan, a long articulated sea-serpent with glowing fibre-optic scales, glides under the live oaks of St Charles Avenue and then rolls straight into the Convention Center hall. The Orpheuscapade afterwards is explicitly open to the public, which is unusual for a black-tie Carnival ball. Tickets run $225 general admission up to $395 VIP, and reserved seating comes in three tiers. General admission is bring your own food and drink.

Where to stand on St Charles Avenue

New Orleans Parade Tickets sets raked metal bleacher stands on the pavement directly against St Charles Avenue by Lafayette Square and Place St Charles, so floats pass at eye level a few feet away. Seats run $20 to $95 depending on the parade. Two front-row zones face the route, and portable toilets stand right at the bleachers. Call the office for group blocks. If you are with an older or mixed-ability group that cannot stand four hours in a crush, book these, and book the marquee nights before they go.

Fat Tuesday from 8 a.m.

Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club was founded in 1909 and is the oldest predominantly African American parading krewe. It opens Fat Tuesday at 8 a.m. Riders in grass skirts and black-and-white face paint hand down hand-painted, glitter-covered coconuts from the floats. The Zulu coconut is the most coveted throw in all of Carnival, and it is handed to you, never thrown. The street parade is free and open to all.

Zulu's Lundi Gras Festival takes the levee at Woldenberg Park with three stages and the king arriving by boat on the Mississippi. Entry is free, and ticketed VIP seating adds food, drink and restrooms. A group that wants a base for the whole day should take the VIP seats.

Rex Organization (School of Design) has paraded since 1872 and fixed Carnival's purple, green and gold along with its anthem. It rolls at 10:30 a.m., the Boeuf Gras out front as a garlanded white papier-mâché fatted ox, the King of Carnival in gilt crown and false beard toasting from a purple, green and gold throne float in the late morning light. Rex is the old-line counterweight to the super krewes. Viewing is free anywhere on the route, and Napoleon Avenue and the St Charles neutral ground are where a group can stake out space.

Where to stay and the Bourbon Street balconies

The Royal Sonesta New Orleans (Bourbon Street) carries wide wrought-iron second- and third-floor balconies over the street, hanging ferns and bead-draped railings, looking straight down onto the crowd ($$$$). If you want a private balcony on Bourbon Street, this is the classic one, with a lavatory and a bar behind you. The hotel has 15 Bourbon-facing suites, three of them hospitality suites. Combined capacity is 175 guests, booked through the sales department. Carnival-week suites are limited and priced accordingly, so book a year out. The hotel greases its own lamp-post out front for the Greasing of the Poles on 5 February 2027.

Masks, wigs and king cake

Maskarade on Royal (805 Royal Street) is a narrow gallery of hand-tooled leather and papier-mâché masks, long pheasant and ostrich feather pieces hanging in rows, the work of more than 40 artists lit like a gallery. It opens daily, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Handmade pieces start at $140, which on Fat Tuesday is the difference between looking like a tourist and looking like you were invited. A custom mask takes a 50% deposit and real lead time. The shop is small, so split a big group.

Fifi's Custom Wigs (934 Royal Street) is pink-walled, with tiered shelves of lavender, acid-green and platinum wigs on styrofoam heads, glitter and pigment pots along the counter and a stylist fitting a wig in a mirrored chair ($$$). Trading since 1997 as Fifi Mahony's, it is now Fifi's Custom Wigs under new ownership, same address and same number, 504 525 4343. The old fifimahonys.com domain is dead, and stale listings still point at it. Group wig-out sessions and hen parties go by appointment, and Carnival week sells out.

Dong Phuong Bakery (Chef Menteur Highway, New Orleans East) is a plain strip-mall Vietnamese bakery with a long morning queue out the door and brioche rings under thick cream-cheese icing, dusted in purple, green and gold sugar and boxed in white cardboard. The bakery is James Beard-recognised, and this is the king cake the whole city argues about. It costs $30 and is sold only during Carnival season, from January. The drive is 25 minutes east of the Quarter, and the cakes sell out daily. The counter is walk-in with no seating to speak of. A group should pre-order whole cakes or buy from one of the in-town stockists.

Rock 'n' Bowl between parades

Rock 'n' Bowl (3016 S Carrollton Avenue) runs retro lanes along one wall of a big hall while a zydeco band plays on stage at the far end, string lights and neon over a packed wooden dance floor. Zydeco, Cajun and R&B, with rented shoes on your feet. Covers are $12 to $20, and the room absorbs a crowd. Book lanes plus the show. It moved from the original Mid-City building years ago, so use the S Carrollton address.

Before you go

Mardi Gras World closes on Mardi Gras Day itself, and Fifi's is shut Mondays and Tuesdays. Book the Royal Sonesta suites, the Endymion tables, the Muses grandstand block and the king cake well ahead of the week.

See the New Orleans guide and the New Orleans hotel search.