
The ‘marvelous’ samba parade
Since the mid-1980s, the samba parade at the Marquês de Sapucaí’s Sambadrome in Rio de Janeiro has been a landmark of the Brazilian Carnival. Each year, samba schools perform in flamboyant costumes and carriages in front of thousands of people. These celebrations are also broadcasted live by TV networks all over the country, which was one of the main reasons why they also became globally known. In 2022, more than 200 thousand people attended the parades at Rio’s Sambadrome. Unsurprisingly, the share of international visitors at the event dropped between 2020 and 2022. Though even back then, Brazilians constituted the majority of Sapucaí’s attendees.The second largest Carnival venue in Brazil is the Sambódromo do Anhembi in São Paulo. Inaugurated in February of 1991, the Anhembi has a total capacity of up to 30 thousand people. In 2022, over half of the audience of the Sambadrome’s parades were women. Considering age, the samba school parades in São Paulo were mostly attended by spectators between 30 and 49 years old.