Thanksgiving Day Parade

The Thanksgiving Day Parade returns to the streets of Philadelphia on Thursday, November 26, 2026, starting at 8:15 AM. It's the oldest Thanksgiving Day parade in the country, first held in 1920 by the Gimbel Brothers Department Store for the city's children and residents. When Gimbel's closed in 1986, WPVI-TV/6abc took over the production, and they've kept it going ever since. Now it's televised live on the station and streamed across 6abc.com, Apple TV, FireTV, Google TV, ROKU, ABC News Live, and Hulu.

The parade follows a 1.4-mile route that starts at the intersection of 20th Street and JFK Boulevard, turns left onto 16th Street, and then left again onto Ben Franklin Parkway, finally ending in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Along the way, you'll see Varsity Spirit All-American cheerleaders and dancers, marching bands, and the balloons and floats that make it a parade. The organizers call it the most band-friendly parade in the country, and they back it up by putting around 19 marching bands of 90 members or more on the route each year.

Everything builds toward the grand finale in front of the museum, where a Mass Youth Choir of roughly 1,000 singers and an All Star Tap Team of more than 600 dancers join in. That's more than 2,000 performers gathering in one spot to close out the morning. For the visiting groups, the festivities extend throughout the week with a boat lunch cruise down the Delaware River and a guided walking tour of historic Philadelphia led by guides in colonial dress.

Watching from the sidewalk is free and open to the public, though a limited number of grandstand seats in the telecast area are reserved for sponsors and VIPs. The parade kicks off at 8:15 AM on Thursday, November 26.