Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations are among the many Latin things to do in NYC in October 2026.
Festivals
31st Panamanian Parade & Street Fair 🇵🇦
Crown Heights, Brooklyn
Oct 10, Sat
– 9am Opening Ceremony at Bergen St & Franklin Ave
– 10am Parade down Franklin Ave
– 2-6pm Street Fair on Classon Ave
The biggest Panamanian festival outside of Panama celebrates Panamanian Independence with marching bands, folk dancers in polleras and montunos, Panamanian music, and a street fair of Panamanian food and artisanal crafts. The Diaspora from the entire East Coast comes to celebrate.
Panama celebrates two independence days: from Spain on November 28, 1821; and from Colombia on November 3, 1903. It regained sovereignty of the Panama Canal from the U.S. on December 31, 1999.
62nd Hispanic Day Parade
🇦🇷🇧🇴🇨🇱🇨🇴🇨🇷🇨🇺🇩🇴🇪🇨🇸🇻🇬🇶🇬🇹🇭🇳🇲🇽🇳🇮🇵🇦🇵🇾🇵🇪🇵🇷🇪🇸🇺🇾🇻🇪
– Mass: St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Midtown East; Sun, Oct 4
– Parade: Fifth Avenue, 44th St to 69th St; Sun, Oct 11, 12pm to around 4pm
Over 10,000 marchers from 21 Spanish-speaking countries celebrate their culture and contributions.
82nd Columbus Day Parade 🇮🇹
Fifth Avenue, 44th St to 69th St
Oct 12, Mon, Columbus Day, 12 noon ~ 4pm
It’s the world’s largest celebration of Italian American heritage and culture. Italians are one of the immigrant communities that defined New York City. A lot of Italian American culture has become American culture. It’s also influenced Latin culture because across the Latin world, we eat a lot of spaghetti. That’s Italian.
Columbus was so evil to Indigenous Peoples that his Spanish sponsors recalled him to Spain in chains and put him on trial. They let him go because he made them rich, but never let him have power again.
We should not celebrate evil, but this is why Italian Americans are attached to Columbus. The Columbus Day holiday was started in the United States in 1892 in an effort to convince Americans to stop lynching Italians for associating with African Americans, after a New Orleans mob lynched 11, the largest recorded mass lynching in American history. It worked. Italians went from being “others” to being Americans.
New York City’s solution is to the Columbus problem is to call the celebration Italian-American Heritage Day.
5th National Indigenous Peoples of the Americas Parade 🪶
Broadway from Madison Square Park
Oct 17, Sat, EXPECTED
– 9am Line-up in Madison Square Park
– 10am Opening Ceremony
– 12pm Parade
– 2pm Closing Ceremony
Music
Rawayana “Dónde es el after? World Tour” 🇻🇪
Venezuelan Latin alternative
“High,” “Sin Ti,” “Binikini”
Barclays Center; Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
Oct 31, Sat, 8pm (doors 7pm)
$53+