Two very American celebrations — New Orleans Mardi Gras, a French Catholic carnival turned into weeks of parades by the city’s krewes, and the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, where hundreds of hot-air balloons rise over the New Mexico desert every October.
Photo: a4gpa, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The two festivals in this atlas are about as different as American celebrations get. Mardi Gras in New Orleans follows the Christian calendar: its season opens on Twelfth Night, 6 January, and ends at midnight before Ash Wednesday, so its biggest days move with Easter. The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta began in 1972 as a radio station’s birthday party and now fills nine days in early October.
Both are designed for crowds on the street and in the open. New Orleans and the Balloon Fiesta publish detailed rules for spectators — from ladder heights along the parade route to a ban on smoking near the balloons — and it is worth reading them before you go.
For nine days every October, more than 500 hot-air balloons lift off from a park on the edge of Albuquerque, New Mexico, in waves at sunrise — the largest ballooning event on Earth, where visitors can walk among the balloons as they inflate.
October 3 – 11, 2026Calculated
Mardi Gras
For two weeks before Lent, the krewes of New Orleans roll their floats down St. Charles Avenue and Canal Street, and riders shower the crowds with beads, doubloons and cups — a carnival season that runs from Twelfth Night to the stroke of midnight on Fat Tuesday.
January 6, 2027Calculated