Feast of San Gennaro

What it is

The Feast of San Gennaro began in 1926 as a one day block party thrown by Neapolitan immigrants for their patron saint and is now an eleven day street festival along Mulberry Street between Canal and Houston, drawing more than a million people. Walking in costs nothing. The 2026 edition is the hundredth. Its signature spectacle is the cannoli eating contest, where the standing mark is 38 cannoli in six minutes.

What to expect

Mulberry Street closes to traffic and fills with food stalls, carnival games and a solid wall of people from late morning until nearly midnight. Weeknights are walkable, weekend nights are not. The religious core is still there behind the sausage and peppers: a solemn mass on the feast day itself and a grand procession that carries the statue of the saint through the neighborhood on the closing weekend.

Getting there

Take the 6, J or Z to Canal Street, or the B and D to Grand Street, and walk up Mulberry. The N, Q, R and W at Canal Street work too. Little Italy is small and the whole festival is a ten minute walk end to end, so pick the quiet end at Houston if you are arriving on a Saturday night.

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