French Quarter Festival
Looking for Mardi Gras Parades? Click HERE for this years schedule!
- Date: Apr 11 - 14, 2024
- Cost: Free
- Location: French Quarter
Since 1984 the French Quarter Festival has brought local music to dozens of stages set in the historic Vieux Carré. It’s a favorite festival of locals, and it draws audiences from all over the country.
Best of all, it's free. In fact, it’s one of the largest free festival in the country. More than 700,000 people attend the four-day event every year.
This popular festival is generally the second weekend of April and features hundreds of local musicians on 23 stages across the French Quarter. From these stages, you’ll hear all kinds of music, like jazz, blues, zydeco, Latin, Cajun, rock and more.
Headliners include talented musicians and groups like Irma Thomas, Bonerama, Big Sam's Funky Nation, Amanda Shaw, Brass-A-Holics, and Jeremy Davenport, to name a few.
It’s also a New Orleans foodies dream come true. In addition to the music, there will be dozens of New Orleans’s best restaurants setting up stands and serving their favorite dishes and drinks across the French Quarter. Restaurants include Court of Two Sisters, Tujague's, Café Beignet ...to name just a few!
There will be a number of free special events and two kids areas to keep the younger ones busy. When you're not eating or dancing by the stage, take a free tour of a garden or courtyard in one of the many French Quarter homes that will be opening their doors for the day.
If that’s not enough, there will be fireworks over the Mississippi River that are guaranteed to make you whole family cheer.