New York’s Village Halloween Parade is an annual holiday parade and street pageant presented on the night of every Halloween in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan. The Village Halloween Parade, initiated in 1973 by Greenwich Village puppeteer and mask maker Ralph Lee, is the world’s largest Halloween parade and the only nighttime parade in New York City. The parade reports itself to have 50,000 “costumed participants” and 2 million spectators.

It has been called “New York’s Carnival.” The parade is largely a spontaneous event as individual marchers can just show up in costume at the starting point without registering or paying anything. The parade’s most signature features are its large puppets which are animated by hundreds of volunteers. The official parade theme each year is applied to the puppets. In addition to the puppets, the website reports that more than 50 marching bands participate each year. In addition, there are some commercial Halloween parade floats.

The official route on Sixth Avenue from Spring Street to 16th Street, all within Manhattan, is 1.4 miles long (the distance from the gathering spot on Sixth Avenue from Canal Street to Spring Street adds another 0.2 miles). The parade usually starts at 7 PM New York time and lasts for about two to three hours.