Carnaval San Francisco

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One of the many dancing scenes at the Carnaval San Francisco.

Carnaval San Francisco is an annual street parade and festival in San Francisco, California.

It was founded by a large group of visionary artists in 1979 who came together in Precita Park to celebrate living a rich cultural life in tune with the rhythms of nature and the ancestors. The following year the Carnaval was held in the Mission District's mythical Dolores Park. Since 1979, the Carnaval has been the central event for many thousands of artists who spend hundreds of hours each year getting ready for the Sunday parade.

The San Francisco Bay Area Carnaval season begins in February as the great Western hemisphere Carnaval celebrations are concluding. The four Carnaval Cities with the greatest influence and presence in the San Francisco Carnaval are Port of Spain, Trinidad; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Salvador, Brazil; and Oruro, Bolivia. The Mission District, San Francisco, California since the 1950s, has been a metro center for the many different Spanish speaking populations of Latin America and these groups will often enter a group or Carnaval contingent in the parade.

Carnaval or Mardi Gras is best seen as a spring festival celebrating the rebirth of life and thus it is a universal festival celebrated by all cultures as well as the first festival. Besides the strong American hemisphere presence in the parade there are generally Carnaval groups from the Philippines, India, China, Middle East and Africa.

As a parade, Carnaval San Francisco is most recognized for its spectacular choreographed dancers and scantily clad beautiful women. The Inner Mission District with two BART stations supports the Bay Area's highest concentration of dance studios and instructors. Many of these dance instructors have been pillars of the Carnaval parade instilling the sublime sense of uniting with the Carnaval spirit though movement and song into their students during the peak moments best experienced in the parade.

Since 2003, the Carnaval Grand Parade has run from 24th Street at Bryant to the 24th Street BART station and then down the Mission Miracle Mile to turn on 17th Street towards the Harrison Street Carnaval San Francisco Music Festival between 16th and 24th Streets. Carnaval San Francisco is produced by Mission Neighborhood Centers Inc. (MNC) as a fund raiser for their many youth, children, family and senior programs. The Cultural Arts Committee (CAC) of MNC together with the Carnaval Advisory Committee oversee the administration of the parade and festival which contracts with long-time Mission District activist Roberto Hernandez to run and grow the event.

For many years the CAC has set as goals growing the cultural festival arts programs in schools and attracting Bay Area corporate support as the one central unifying annual event to bring the three major cities, nine counties, and 99 cities of the San Francisco Bay Area together.

Carnaval San Francisco supports the growth of Carnival as an international tool for peace and harmony. Since 2000 it has been the only North American member of the world's largest organization promoting the unique civic institutions of Carnival, the Federation of European Carnival Cities.