New Orleans doesn't really run on twelve months. It runs on seasons: Carnival, Lent and crawfish, festival season, snowball season, hurricane season, football season, and the holidays that roll right back into Carnival again. Ask a local what time of year it is and you're more likely to hear "it's king cake season" than "it's February."
This is the year the way people who live here feel it. It's not an events feed. For exact dates, our festival calendar has them. If you're trying to pick when to visit, we ranked every month too. This one is about rhythm. We've watched it from behind the counter on Magazine Street and Chartres Street for twenty years, and it's remarkably dependable for a city that is famously not.
Carnival: January Into February (or March)
The year starts on January 6. Twelfth Night opens Carnival, the first king cakes appear, and from then until Mardi Gras day, the city is in season.
How long that season lasts depends on Easter, which is why the date of Mardi Gras moves around every year. We explain the math in When Is Mardi Gras? What doesn't move is the feeling. Offices pass around king cake every week. Balls happen on weekends you'll never hear about. The parades start slow, then come almost every night at the end, and people Uptown start carrying ladders around like it's normal. Please learn the ladder rules before you bring one.
Then comes Mardi Gras day itself, with costumes in the Marigny and Bywater, Zulu and Rex on the main routes, and the Black Masking Indians out in their neighborhoods. By midnight it's over. The next morning is Ash Wednesday and everybody is very quiet.
The Knife Stays In The Box shirt exists because of this season. So does our whole Mardi Gras collection.
Lent and Early Spring: Fish Fries, Altars and the First Crawfish
Lent in New Orleans is less about giving things up and more about what you eat on Fridays. Church fish fries pop up all over town. Crawfish season, which can start in winter depending on the weather, starts to hit its stride, and backyard boils return. If you've never been to one, read up on the backyard boil and how to eat crawfish first.
March brings a cluster of traditions that most visitors miss. St. Patrick's parades roll through the Irish Channel and Metairie, with cabbages flying. St. Joseph's Day on March 19 brings altars in homes and churches, loaded with breads and cookies, a tradition carried by the city's Sicilian families. And around that same weekend, the Black Masking Indians come back out for Super Sunday.
The weather is perfect for about five minutes. Enjoy it.
Festival Season: April and May
This is the stretch the rest of the country knows about. French Quarter Fest takes over the Quarter in April, mostly free, mostly local acts. Then Jazz Fest fills two long weekends at the Fair Grounds around the turn from April to May. Locals spend months arguing about which weekend is better. Read our Jazz Fest packing list before you go, because the bag rules are real.
Between the big ones, there's a festival nearly every weekend somewhere, from neighborhood art markets to food fests built around a single ingredient. Crawfish is still going strong. Restaurants are packed. It is, by most local accounts, the best time to be here and the hardest time to get a dinner reservation.
Early Summer: Snowballs, Tomatoes and the Start of Hurricane Season
By June the heat is settling in, and the city adjusts its whole life around it. Snowball stands have been open for a while by now, and the lines get long after school lets out. Creole tomatoes show up at the markets. Crawfish winds down, and people start talking about it in the past tense, a little sadly.
June 1 is also the official start of hurricane season, which runs through the end of November. Most locals don't panic. They check the gas in the car, restock water and batteries, and start watching the tropics with one eye.
Around the Fourth of July, Essence Fest brings one of the biggest crowds of the year downtown. Everything else slows down.
Deep Summer: The August Slowdown
July and August are the city's quiet season, and the people who stay through them earn something. It's hot in a way that's hard to explain until you've walked six blocks in it. Afternoon thunderstorms roll in like clockwork and flood a street or two for an hour. We wrote a whole survival guide to New Orleans in August.
The upside is that restaurants run summer deals to bring locals in, the bars are easy to get into, and the city feels like it belongs to the people who live here. Satchmo SummerFest honors Louis Armstrong in early August. Late August also carries weight. August 29 is the anniversary of Katrina, and a lot of people spend that day quietly.
This is peak season for our Died of Humidity tank, and for a good reason. Our guide to what to wear in summer has more.
Fall: Football, Second Lines and the First Cold Front
Fall in New Orleans starts on a schedule set by the NFL and the weather, in that order. Saints season starts while it's still summer outside. Black and gold goes back on, Sunday plans get built around kickoff, and game day traditions take over. Our Saints collection gets busy.
Second line season picks up, too. The social aid and pleasure clubs parade on Sundays from late summer into spring, and some of the biggest anniversary parades fall in the fall.
Then, sometime in October if we're lucky, the first real cold front comes through. The humidity drops, everybody goes outside at once, and you'll see people in jackets at 65 degrees. Halloween is a bigger deal here than most places, especially in the Quarter and the Marigny. And on November 1, All Saints' Day, families visit the cemeteries to clean and whitewash the tombs and leave flowers.
The Holidays: Lights, Réveillon and Bonfires
Thanksgiving here often comes with a turkey, a pot of gumbo and an argument about whether gumbo is a soup. After that, the city goes all in on Christmas in its own way.
City Park lights up the oaks. Restaurants serve Réveillon dinners, an old Creole tradition that's been revived as a December menu. Upriver, families build bonfires on the levee for Christmas Eve. We wrote about all of it in Christmas in New Orleans. If you're shopping, our Christmas gift guide sorts the whole list.
New Year's brings the Sugar Bowl and fireworks on the river. And then, a week later, it's January 6 again. The Happy Almost Mardi Gras ornament was made for exactly that week, when the tree is still up and everyone's already thinking about king cake.
Living by the New Orleans Seasons
Once you've been here a couple of years, you stop thinking in months. You plan around the seasons instead. You know not to schedule anything important on a parade weekend. You eat crawfish while you can, and you know the city slows down in August, then wakes back up with the first cold front.
That's the calendar the Nola Converts learn fastest, and the one people who leave miss the most. If you're new, our guide to moving to New Orleans covers the rest. If you're far away, keep the calendar anyway. Red beans on Monday, king cake after Twelfth Night, and be a New Orleanian, wherever you are.
New Orleans Seasons: FAQ
What are the seasons in New Orleans?
Locals tend to mark the year by Carnival (January into February or March), crawfish and festival season (spring), snowball and hurricane season (summer), football and second line season (fall), and the holidays. The weather itself is mostly warm, with a long hot summer and a short, mild winter.
When is the best season to visit New Orleans?
Spring, from about March through May, has the best weather and the most festivals, along with the biggest crowds. Fall after the first cold front is a close second.
When is hurricane season in New Orleans?
The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30, with the most activity usually from mid-August to mid-October.
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