Brighton Festival Children's Parade 2026

The Brighton Festival Children's Parade is back on Saturday 2 May, running from 10:30am to about 1:00pm. It's a long-standing part of the festival, having run since 1986, and it's produced by Same Sky, a Brighton arts organisation that specialises in large-scale community events. They describe it as the largest parade of its kind in Europe, with an estimated 150,000 students, teachers and group leaders taking part over the years. Each year, schools and community groups build their own handmade sculptures from wet-strength tissue paper and willow withies, and the procession officially opens the festival with a fiesta of colour, costume and live music.

This year marks the parade's 40th edition and 40 years of partnership with Brighton Festival. The theme is built around the National Year of Reading, bringing children's books to life across genres like realistic fiction, fantasy, science fiction and graphic novels. A Same Sky artist works with each participating school, and samba masterclasses with percussion expert Ollie Tunmer help teachers bring live music to the route.

It's a good stretch through the city: it starts at New Road / Jubilee Street, proceeds to North Street, along East Street and Grand Junction Road, and finishes at Madeira Drive. It's free to watch, so you can pick a spot anywhere along the route and see the whole thing pass by. 10:30am to 1:00pm, free to watch.