Mardi Gras is just a small example of what festivals this unique city offers year round, but no matter which one you attend, expect life-changing food and soul stirring music.

Sure, Mardi Gras is one of the best festivals in Mandeville get-togethers, but in a metropolis filled with scrumptious eating places, top-notch bars and a completely unique lifestyle, you can not assume Carnival festivities to be the most effective events well worth exploring. Hence our rundown of the maximum great fairs in the town.

These happenings are some of the most well-documented and thrilling throughout the complete country. Spectacles of fun packed with costumes, wigs, crazy hats and extra, they’ve now not been authentically replicated in every other city—and for precise motive: no person can best New Orleans.

From religious festivals to culinary showcases (beignets!), literary gatherings and, of course, incomparable track revelries, join us on an experience thru a set of the Big Easy’s very bests fests.

1. Mardi Gras
Although technically handling Fat Tuesday, maximum locals call the entire season starting on Epiphany and roll thru the city until Ash Wednesday Mardi Gras (additionally referred to as Carnival). Make no mistake: this is a own family-pleasant affair and not entirely a parade of debauchery famend throughout the globe. Expect lavish krewe balls, kids perched on unique ladders taking within the display and, of direction, all styles of folks dressed up across the French Quarter and Marigy. Don’t miss the Gay Bourbon Street Awards costume opposition at St. Ann and Bourbon, where marvelous clothes will blow your thoughts.

2. New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival
For 50 years, Jazz Fest has brought two weekends of musical virtuosity of each genre to a NOLA Racetrack. Always held on the ultimate weekend of April and the first one in every of May, the fest capabilities 12 stages hosting acts ranging from jazz to blues, from gospel to Cajun zydeco and rock, usa, funk, rap and hip-hop. This massive outdoor extravaganza also boasts a number of the maximum delicious meals you have ever tasted: neighborhood favorites jambalaya and gumbo make appearances subsequent to tender-shell crab po’ boys and beignets from the one-and-most effective Cafe du Monde. Given the unpredictability of the weather, we recommend packing sunscreen, plastic ponchos and rubber rain boots.

3. Essence Festival
Always happening around the July 4th weekend in the Superdome, this is a meeting hosted by way of Essence magazine full of stay music and comedy performances in addition to well-being, style and splendor reveals catering to African American ladies. There also are conferences, which includes the Global Black Economic Forum and the Power Conference, so it shouldn’t come as a marvel that former First Lady Michelle Obama headlined the 2019 fest, making its 25th anniversary alongside Missy Elliott, Nas, Big Freedia, Maze and Pharrell Williams.

4. Voodoo Music + Arts Experience
Halloween weekend is constantly a blast in town, as costumed revelers fill the streets of the French Quarter and past. You’ll discover plenty of dressed-up human beings in City Park, too, wherein the once a year Voodoo Music + Arts Experience is going off. This year’s lineup has no longer been introduced yet, but we count on to look at an entire lot of EDM artists on stage. In addition to the tune, guests experience carnival rides, art installations, crafts cubicles and masses of amazing neighborhood food, however nobody casting spells… At the least now not that we’ve seen, but.

5. French Quarter Festival
This absolutely free festival that celebrates Louisiana musicians boasts 23 levels hosting all forms of genre artists during the French Quarter. In order to preserve it the most important unfastened song fest in America, anyone needs to purchase food and drinks in the fest perimeters. Of course, the fare is prepared by using some of the city’s top chefs, so keep in mind it is a small charge to pay for 4 days with first rate tune and first-rate culinary delights.

6. New Orleans Burlesque Festival
Burlesque is alive and well in New Orleans, specifically on Bourbon Street, where strip indicates once in a while reveal a chunk too much. At the twelfth annual New Orleans Burlesque Festival, performers from around the arena gather to show off their talents with enthusiasts, feathers and other paraphernalia during an entire weekend committed to the artwork made famous with the aid of Hellin Heels and Roxie Le Rouge. And, as always in a burlesque display, be ready to peer comedians, singers and wacky emcees as nicely be part of the naughty dancers on stage.

7. Oak Street Po’Boy Festival
Every November, a crowd of locals and a few in-the-understand visitors gather on Oak Street to flavor the satisfactory po’boys (French bread sandwiches piled excessive, generally with meat or seafood) that New Orleans has to provide. The Oak Street Po-Boy Festival simply maintains getting larger and tastier. This convivial avenue food festival hosts 30 special organizations to cook dinner up a whole type of the delicacy. It wouldn’t be a NOLA fest without music: count on top Louisiana performers maintaining each person entertained.

8. Tales of the Cocktail
Part insider convention, element public celebration, Tales of the Cocktail is the annual meeting of the minds of bartenders and mixologists from all over the international who accumulate in New Orleans to “teach, boost and guide the global hospitality industry.” And whilst the event has been bringing bartenders together given that 2002, it additionally offers cocktail-loving participants of the general public the danger to sign up for in, with popular public tickets to be had for seminars, tasting rooms, cocktail metropolis excursions and “Spirited Dinners,” occasions held at 30 restaurants across the metropolis pairing liquids with food mainly created by a visitor mixologist and the eating place’s chef.

9. Bayou Boogaloo
The annual Mid-City Bayou Boogaloo takes area in the areas next to Bayou St. John, with 4 tiers (one for children) going off for 3 days. This music fest will rejoice its 15th yr in 2020 and always showcases many of NOLA’s favorites, from Amanda Shaw and Anders Osborne to Cowboy Mouth and Tab Benoit. As a song-loving flotilla forms inside the bayou itself, as bikini-clad festers arrive in kayaks, canoes, rubber rafts and whatever else that floats, you’ll realize that this is genuinely a locals’ occasion in its forte. General admission, charged for the first time in 2019, is most effective $10, which makes this mid-May annual occasion a good deal, no matter it now not being a very free fest.

10. St. Patrick’s Day
Ever had a head of cabbage thrown at your head? Well, if now not, you don’t know what you are missing out on whilst St. Patrick’s Day hits New Orleans. The annual March celebration of the client saint of Ireland in NOLA consists of glide parades via the Irish Channel neighborhood, in downtown (from the Bywater to the Marigny to Bourbon Street) and in Metairie (a nearby suburb). Throughout the day, beads embellished with plastic beer steins, four-leaf clovers and potatoes rain down alongside all of the fixins of Irish stew—those might be actual cabbages, carrots and spuds. Block parties show up in the Irish Channel close to the parade direction, taking the carrying of inexperienced to new highs (and lows). Notice parents dressed in authentic kilt regalias however additionally cabbages used as breast substitutes. It’s usually a crazy scene right here, full of tune, to-cross cups and po’boys from close by Parasol’s.