The parade is Saturday October 31, 2026, and it steps off at 7 p.m.
This is the 53rd Village Halloween Parade. It runs straight up Sixth Avenue, starting down around Canal and King Street and finishing at West 15th Street, and it usually keeps going until close to 11 p.m. Marchers form up at Canal Street and Sixth Avenue, with arrival windows listed at 6:30 and again at 9 p.m. Anyone in costume can march. No ticket, no application, you just show up in the lineup area and join.
Halloween lands on a Saturday in 2026, which means bigger crowds than usual. Plan the getting-there and the getting-home parts before you plan the costume.
Where to actually stand
The lower blocks, roughly Canal up to Houston, are the least brutal. Crowds thicken the further north you go, and by the time you're near 14th Street people are five deep with phones up. If you want a curb spot below Houston, be there by 6:15. If you show up at 8, stand somewhere in the low 20s of blocks... which is to say, go north and accept you'll be watching over shoulders.
A few things we tell guests every year:
- Cross streets get closed as the parade moves, so pick your side of Sixth Avenue early and stay on it.
- Kids do better at the start, both because it's earlier and because the puppets and the marching bands lead the parade. The later hours get rowdier.
- It's an outdoor parade at the end of October in New York. Bring a layer that fits under the costume.
Getting there from the Financial District
Fulton Street station is a few minutes' walk from our door on John Street, and the A and C run from there to Canal Street in about ten minutes. That station exit puts you right at the bottom of the route where the parade forms up.
Getting home is the part people underestimate. Sixth Avenue trains are packed from about 9:30 onward, and the closed cross streets make cabs and rideshares slow and expensive. If you're staying downtown, walking back is genuinely the better option: it's about 25 minutes from Canal Street down Broadway to John Street, and it's a nice, quiet walk once you're past Chambers.
Halloween in Lower Manhattan itself
Down here it's calm. The Financial District empties out on weekends, so if you want a drink after the parade the bars around Stone Street will feel like a different city than Sixth Avenue did an hour earlier. Trick-or-treating happens in the residential pockets of Battery Park City and along a few FiDi blocks in the late afternoon, before the parade even starts, so families can do both.
Where to stay for it
Stay south. Anywhere below Canal means you can walk home when the trains are a mess, and Lower Manhattan hotel rates in late October tend to be gentler than anything near the Village.
We're at 17 John Street. Our suites are apartment-style with a kitchen, which is useful on a night when you're eating late and want coffee at your own pace the next morning. We have 2- and 3-bedroom suites for groups and families (no connecting rooms, so those layouts are how everyone stays together), a laundry room, a gym, and a rooftop terrace with lounge chairs for the following afternoon when nobody wants to move.
If you're coming for the weekend rather than the night, the first of November is one of the better days to be downtown: the marathon is running through the city, the light is good, and the waterfront walk from Battery Park to the Brooklyn Bridge is right outside.