Seasons
The New Orleans year, season by season.
Five seasons, counted from the calendar itself: the anchor festivals in each window with their dates, tentative dates labelled tentative, and an honest count of what is listed so far. The calendar is a rolling year, so the later windows fill in as organisers publish.
Carnival
6 January to Mardi Gras Day
The season that organises the New Orleans year. It opens on Twelfth Night, 6 January, with walking parades in the French Quarter and the Marigny, builds through January, and finishes with the big Uptown parades on the St. Charles Avenue route in the final stretch to Mardi Gras Day, Tuesday 9 February 2027. Every parade is free to watch from the street.
80 events in the calendar fall in this window, 33 of them on tentative dates, labelled as such wherever they appear.
Spring festival season
March to May
The festival season proper: Congo Square Rhythms, French Quarter Festival and Jazz Fest land across March, April and May, with Hogs for the Cause among them. The biggest weekends confirm their dates early; smaller events publish closer to the day, so this part of the calendar keeps filling as organisers announce, and the weekly note tracks the confirmations.
12 events in the calendar fall in this window.
Summer
June to August
Summer is the city's hot, quieter stretch, and the calendar bends around the heat: the headline weekends are the Essence Festival of Culture and Satchmo SummerFest, and much of the rest runs indoors, on the river or after dark. Summer dates publish later than the spring ones, so expect this window to grow.
4 events in the calendar fall in this window, 1 of them on tentative dates, labelled as such wherever they appear.
Autumn
September to November
Autumn opens the busiest run of the year: football season and the festival calendar overlap, the food festivals stack up, from the Po-Boy Festival to Beignet Fest, and the Saints are at home in the Superdome. The autumn on this page is the one the calendar currently holds, running to late November 2026, where the holiday season takes over; the next autumn fills in as organisers publish.
184 events in the calendar fall in this window.
Holidays
Late November to 5 January
From late November the city lights up: Celebration in the Oaks in City Park, caroling in Jackson Square, holiday bonfires and markets, and the countdown on New Year's Eve. The window closes on 5 January, the night before Twelfth Night opens Carnival and the wheel turns again.
135 events in the calendar fall in this window, 1 of them on tentative dates, labelled as such wherever they appear.