Over 500 street parades expected at carnival in São Paulo

São Paulo city is expecting this year 511 carnival street parades. Most of them – 145 – are planned to take place in the west zone, and 121 downtown.

The parades should take place in the so-called pre-carnival period, on February 11 and 12, during the long carnival holiday, from February 18 to 21, and the post-carnival period on February 25 and 26.

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The municipality estimates that this year the number of revelers surpasses the 15 million people who participated in the celebrations in the capital in 2020. “People are in a great mood for carnival after the [COVID-19] pandemic,” municipal secretary of regional administrations Alexandre Modonezi pointed out.

Spreading revelry

According to local authorities, an effort has been made to spread carnival out from downtown. Modonezi explained that 48.9 percent of the carnival groups will parade in the neighborhoods and outlying areas of the city. For the east zone, 68 groups are planned; in the south zone, 101; and in the north zone, 76.

At the end of last year, the Municipal Secretariat of Culture launched a public notice of BRL$ 3 million to support 300 carnival associations to strengthen peripheral groups with no access to sponsorship, secretary Aline Torres explained.

“We perfectly understand how the samba schools emerged in São Paulo and how they have become a socio-cultural instrument of the city. These traditional, peripheral associations are the great promoters of carnival. They offer, for example, percussion workshops to young people from the periphery. However, this social work was severely affected during the two years of the pandemic,” she added.

Mega groups

The so-called carnival mega groups, which one gathering more than 40 thousand people, will parade in six different zones in the city: Consolação Street (downtown); Luís Dumont Villares Street (southern region); Ibirapuera Park (southern region); Faria Lima Avenue (western region); Marquês de São Vicente Avenue (northern region) and Laguna Street (southern region).