Parades
The offerings range from offbeat subcultural processions to spectacles with huge, glitzy floats to traditional affairs featuring floats built on old cotton wagons and depicting themes from myth and legend.
Mardi Gras Beads
The thrill and challenge of acquiring prized gewgaws has become a competitive spectacle unto itself, summoning both animal urges and creative strategizing.
Mardi Gras Calendar
A compilation of events and activities that are open to the public including everything from parades, balls and parties to grassroots expressions of indigenous culture and art and photography exhibits.
About Us
We believe in the wisdom of fools and the true spirit of Mardi Gras: an optimistic and enduring human capacity for merriment and make-believe, for mirthful mockery and the creative indulgence of whimsy.
Mardi Gras Exhibits & Attractions
As an expression of a rich cultural heritage involving many diverse communities, New Orleans Mardi Gras is well represented in museums and exhibits, tours and attractions.
Image Galleries
Experience the eye-popping kaleidoscope that is Mardi Gras — a visually intoxicating celebration and the official art form of New Orleans.
King Cake
King cake has become a widely recognized symbol of pre-Lenten feasting and the most popular way to share the Mardi Gras spirit.
Children & Mardi Gras
Costume closets, king cake parties, making shoebox floats, watching parades from atop festooned ladders and snagging throws with butterfly or fishing nets — all are part of the experience of children and Mardi Gras.
Streams & Broadcasts
Access live and on-demand Mardi Gras programming. The offerings are comparable in abundance to an Endymion bead shower.
Tips & Tricks
Reap throw booty and eyeball kicks, while avoiding pitfalls like parking tickets or bungling the all-important logistics of finding a place to pee.
Colorful Characters
Iconoclastic provocateurs, gifted artisans and visionary revelers who collectively enrich the panorama of Mardi Gras.
Backstreet Mardi Gras
Idiosyncratic processions, artistic pursuits and living traditions happening outside tourist zones.
Mardi Gras Miscellany
A grab bag that includes appreciations of movers and shakers who are no longer with us, plus retrospectives and features on noteworthy happenings.
Mardi Gras 101
Bone up on trappings, traditions and symbols of Mardi Gras — and find out why this civic ritual best exemplifies the cultural richness of New Orleans.
Mardi Gras Music
Mardi Gras music, like Christmas music, is not so much a style as it is an aural milieu comprised of various forms and genres.
Local Color and Customs
The customs and traditions of Mardi Gras comprise a cultural repertoire, whereby different themes, rituals and symbols are cobbled together, recycled and reinterpreted.
Mardi Gras Trivia
Test your knowledge of Mardi Gras — a civic ritual with a storied history and innumerable facets and traditions.
