One of San Francisco’s biggest street parties is back, and it’s even bigger than last year.
Carnaval (opens in new tab), now in its 48th year, runs through Sunday, featuring food trucks and stands, stalls loaded with clothing and trinkets, and live music celebrating indigenous cultures in the Caribbean and Latin America
Across both days, which crescendos with a parade at 10 a.m. Sunday with 72 comparsas, or groups of singers and dancers, 700,000 people will roam down Harrison Street, estimates Cultura y Arte Nativa de las Américas (opens in new tab) CEO Roberto Hernandez, whose organization puts on Carnaval. In 2025, the parade and festival drew 500,000, he said.
With the World Cup just 19 days away, this year’s Carnaval theme is soccer — specifically, La Copa del Pueblo, or The People’s Cup. The name is literal: the parade’s grand marshal is the girls’ soccer team from the Jamestown Community Center, and festivalgoers wove through the crowd in soccer jerseys.
Hernandez said the theme was meant to honor soccer’s democratic spirit, a sport whose fans and players span from World Cup pros to kids just learning to kick.
“We have a lot of champions that don’t really get recognized,” he said.
Some Carnaval fans traveled from as far as Watsonville; others just walked out their front doors.
It was Lorenzo Barranco’s first time attending Carnaval. His favorite parts were the live music and the food — he was eating a birria taco when he spoke with The Standard.
“Everybody’s got a positive attitude,” he said. “It’s just a great place to be today.”
Lisa Hernandez, who has been coming to Carnaval for 15 years and lives in the Mission,, says she loves Carnaval for the size of the crowd, the food and the music, although her favorite thing is buying clothes from the stalls.
“You can’t sit here on a curb and be bored,” she said.
By 2 p.m., there was a sea of people visible along Harrison Street, but organizers say Sunday will be even more lively.
The parade runs two hours, and starts at 24th and Bryant streets. From there, it will travel west along 24th Street to Mission Street, then turn onto Mission and continue north up Mission Street to 14th Street.
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