Junkanoo Parade 2013 Nassau

Live Stream, Route, Start Time, Schedule

Nassua, Bahamas 1 January

The Junkanoo New Year parade is a colourful part of Caribbean that brings a huge carnival party and parade to the streets of the Bahamas' capital of Nassau during the holiday period. Perhaps unusually for a New Year parade the event actually starts on Boxing Day, the 26 December with a large street parade (well the Caribbean folk always have liked to do things a little differently!) and then there is the main event on New Year's Day itself, which gets underway at 5.30pm local time in downtown Freeport.

The Junkanoo parade traditionally involved a great cavalcade of colour, with local costumes, floats, musicians and dancers. The tradition has spawned a number of copycat versions around the world, and particularly in the United States, where Miami and Key West both hold their own Junkanoo parades (although these versions are held in October)

Perhaps most people's familiarity with the parade will come from the James Bond film Thunderball, where Sean Connery is chased through the streets of Nassau during the parade, so if you've seen the film (and if you haven't, why on earth not, it's an absolute classic! Although I'm generally more of a Roger Moore fan myself but I digress..) then you'll have some idea of what to expect.

The 2013 parade is being held in memorial of Donna Duncombe, the Weather Girl of Grand Bahama who sadly passed away in September 2012.

Lineup:

Superstar Rockers
Swingers
Majestic Crusaders
Kingdom Culture
Classic Dancers
Harbour Boys
Bayshore Warriors
Invaders
Showtine
Bushwhackers
Sting & Victory Boys

The Bahamas Local website is advertising a live stream for this event here:

Junkanoo live stream

Although we do have some doubts as to whether this will run live on the day as the last archived video on the site is from 2010 - we will keep an eye on it though and update as appropriate. If that doesn't work the closest we can get is a Nassau webcam feed, but the location is a beach view so unlikely to capture too much parade activity.

If you're in the Bahamas over the New Year period and looking for somewhere to stay to attend any of the Junkanoo events you can check out availability and make reservations for local hotels here.

We would love to hear any personal experiences or feedback from the events we feature - if you've been or are going to this parade, please post any of your own comments or reviews in the box below.

For details of all the most popular New Year's Day parades, including those in Dublin, New York, Philadelphia and London, see our Parades page.