San Francisco Chinese New Year Festival and Parade

The San Francisco Chinese New Year Festival and Parade is the largest Chinese New Year celebration outside of Asia. It is one of San Francisco’s top festivals and attracts a large number of visitors every year. In 2014 alone the San Francisco Chinese New Year’s Festival and Parade was attended by close to 1 million people. A San Francisco tradition since just after the Gold Rush, the parade continues to delight and entertain the many hundreds of thousands of people that come to watch it on the street as well as on television.

Named as one of the top ten Parades in the world by IFEA, the Southwest Airlines Chinese New Year Parade in San Francisco is one of the few remaining night illuminated Parades in the US. The festivities includes 10/5K run, Chinatown Basketball Jamboree, Miss Chinatown USA Pageant, Chinatown Community Street Fair, Chinese New Year Flow Fair and special exhibitions. All activities are built around the premier, nighttime Chinese New Year parade filled with color, ethnicity and culture.

Nowhere in the world will you see a lunar new year parade with more gorgeous floats, elaborate costumes, ferocious lions, exploding firecrackers , and of course the newly crowned Miss Chinatown U.S.A. and her court. A crowd favorite is the spectacular 268′ Golden Dragon (“Gum Lung”) It takes a team of over 100 men and women from the martial arts group, White Crane to carry this dragon throughout the streets of San Francisco.