Columbus Day Parade 2024

Live Stream, TV Coverage, Lineup, Route, Start Time

The New York Columbus Day Parade is a festive event that includes lively processions, colourful floats, marching bands and many other cultural performances that commemorates Italian-Amarican heritage. This year celebrates its 80th year. It attracts around a million people to the city streets to see the 35,000 strong marchers.

Columbus Day is one of the more controversial celebrations in the United States, with many concerned about some aspects of the famous explorer's behaviour during his conquering days, but the day is still the setting for one of the slightly smaller scale parades through the streets of New York City, a city that loves a parade like pretty much nowhere else opn earth.

Columbus Day is marked also with special events, parades and celebrations in countries across Latin America (especially Colombia, Venezuela and Costa Rica), the Caribbean, Italy and Spain.

The reason for the selction of this specific date is that Columbus Day officially marks the anniversary of Christopher Columbus into the New World of the Americas, way back in 1492.

Date

The NYC Columbus Day parade in 2024 will take place on Monday 14th October from 11.30am.

Parade Schedule

The New York Columbus Day parade is quite straightforward in essence; the parade participants march down the broad expanses of Fifth Avenue, from 44th to 72nd Streets. There are pauses for red carpet performances at the 5th Avenue junctions with 67th and 69th Streets.

The parade starts at around 11.30am and is preceded by a Columbus Day mass at St Patrick's Cathedral. The parade usually ends around 3pm.

Best Viewing Spots

The areas between 67th and 68th streets are therefore the most popular viewing points, with grandstands erected to help house the crowds, so you need to get there extra early if you would like to secure a decent spot. Elsewhere the route will also be crowded so as always try get there as far in advance as you can.

Social & Streaming

The parade is due to be broadcast live on TV via ABC7 News New York, who also offer an online stream, so we hope to see the same again this year - here's the link for their online viewing:

Columbus parade live stream

You might also like to check out some of the local NYC webcams, an often underutilised resource for people trying to watch events in the city. There is in particular an excellent live streaming camera positioned right on 5th Avenue: New York webcams

Hotels and Accommodation

If you plan far enough in advance there are some hotels with rooms that have views over 5th Avenue so you can avoid getting embroiled in all the crowds down on the streets. These include the St Regis and The Pierre (a very pricey choice unfortunately). Try searching by location on the link below to find options in all price brackets.

You can check availability and make reservations for local hotels here.

Reviews & Sharing

Page content by Martin Kerrigan. If you have found the content on this page useful then please feel free to share it with your friends and family, or if you have any information or updates that might be useful for us to add to the page then please contact us

This site uses cookies, continued use constitutes acceptance - see our Privacy Policy