On Wednesday, London’s 34th annual New Year’s Day Parade and Festival took to the streets of the nation’s capital at midday, filled with thousands of performers and colourful floats from around the world, made up with dancers, acrobats, cheerleaders, marching bands, huge balloons, confetti, historic cars, old steam traction engines, horses and more, all to celebrate the start of 2020 and a new decade.
This year’s London New Year’s Day Parade, known simply as LNYDP, is also run alongside the Grand Finale of the London International Choral Festival, which is performed in top music venues in London. In addition, the LNYDP raises funds for London charities across London and to date has raised in excess of £1.5 million.
The first LNYDP was held back in 1987 with 2,000 performers, today it totals over 10,000 participants, representing all the London boroughs and performers from not only the UK but also the US and Europe, with over 26 countries taking part in the festivities. An estimated 500,000 people turned out on Wednesday to watch this spectacular event, lining the parade route and waving flags. The parade was also broadcast on television both here in the UK and abroad and last year reached an audience of more than 300,000,000.
Luckily, the weather stayed dry as the parade started on Piccadilly near Green Park Tube Station and ran all the way along Piccadilly to Piccadilly Circus and then followed a route down Regent Street, Lower Regent Street into Waterloo Place, down Pall Mall and onto Cockspur Street, into Trafalgar Square, then down Whitehall and Parliament Street, ending up in Parliament Square at around 3:30pm, wrapping up the formal proceedings.
We hope that you enjoy this photographic montage of this year’s wonderful performers and participants who filled the streets of London, entertaining the happy onlookers.
Editorial by Simon Burrell, Editor of Our Man On The Ground and photographs by Pietro Recchia, our London-based photographer specialising in fashion, portraits and luxury events.
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