Skeletons, performers and tributes fill the capital
Giant skeletons accompanied floats through downtown Mexico City, alongside musicians, acrobats and performers wearing masks and feathered headdresses. The parade coincided with the weekend of the city's Formula One Grand Prix.
About 4,000 people participated in the procession, which left the Glorieta de la Diana Cazadora at 2 p.m. local time and followed Paseo de la Reforma to the Zócalo, Deutsche Welle reported. The audience included spectators from Mexico and abroad.
Among those honored were singer Juan Gabriel, filmmaker Emilio Fernández on the 40th anniversary of his death, and the Maya "Red Queen" of Palenque, according to Wikipedia and Deutsche Welle. An 11-story Catrina sculpture, depicting an elegantly dressed female skeleton, stands in the Zócalo, the capital's main square. Deutsche Welle reported its height as more than 33 meters.
Ana Suares, a 32-year-old Portuguese tourist, told AFP she found the parade fascinating. "People happy, the costumes, the flowers. It is quite wild! People coming together to remember those who are no longer here but are in our hearts," she said.
Isabel Halsey, 37, from the United States, said: "It is colourful, smelly, dramatic, full of people of different nationalities and personalities. I love it!"
How a movie procession became a real event
The parade is a recent addition to a centuries-old observance. Its inspiration came from the opening of the 2015 film "Spectre," in which James Bond moves through a downtown Mexico City crowd costumed as the dead. When the city staged its first parade in 2016, it included some of the giant figures seen in the movie.
Miguel Angel Mancera, Mexico City's mayor from 2012 to 2018, organized that first procession. He recalled the public demand that followed the film: "Everyone started asking me, 'What about the parade? When's the parade?'" He added: "It was an adventure."
The production itself had imposed costs on downtown businesses. Atlas Obscura reported that filming lasted 10 days in March 2015 and required extensive street closures. Those closures cost 6,500 local businesses more than 60% of their revenue, with total losses of at least 376 million pesos, or about $20 million, according to the outlet.
The inaugural parade, held on October 29, 2016, attracted an estimated 425,000 spectators between the Angel of Independence and the Zócalo, Atlas Obscura reported, citing city government estimates. Organizers had anticipated only about 135,000 attendees, according to Wikipedia.
A growing audience and nationwide economic expectations
The parade was canceled in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and returned in 2021 with preventive measures, according to Wikipedia. By 2025, attendance had reached about 1.5 million, the same source reported, citing Deutsche Welle.
Mancera expressed pride in the event's growth. "It's a very, very big thing now," he said.
Beyond the capital's parade, Day of the Dead celebrations across Mexico were projected to generate about 53 billion pesos, roughly $2.944 billion, in economic benefit in 2026. That would be 7% more than in 2025, according to Deutsche Welle, citing AFP and EFE.
Family rituals amid the crowds
Day of the Dead combines pre-Columbian traditions with the Christian observance of All Saints' Day. Families have traditionally remembered deceased relatives by visiting their graves and preparing altars with favorite foods and other belongings associated with their lives.
Roberto Montalvo, an academic at the Iberoamerican University, described a shift from a "more intimate" celebration to "a mass event." Some cemeteries now draw so many tourists that visitors and families compete for space.
"Do we adapt the visit to the ritual, or does the ritual adapt to the visitor?" Montalvo asked.
