New Orleans buries its dead above ground because the water table gives it no choice, and the walled tomb-cities sit a few blocks from the bars. That inheritance is why October here is less a costume department than a month the city has always kept: historic houses redressed for mourning, a skeleton krewe rolling through the Quarter after dark, a Voodoo festival on a French Quarter pavement that has nothing to do with the plastic skulls sold two streets away. In 2026 Halloween falls on a Saturday, which is the busiest possible outcome, and the Krewe of Boo parade rolls the Saturday before it.
That gives you four usable weekends, and they are not interchangeable. The 9th to 11th is cheap and musical, the 16th to 18th is the one that suits children, the 24th is the parade, and the 30th to 1st is Halloween proper at full price. Decide which of those you want before you touch a New Orleans hotel search, because the rate you pay for the last weekend is roughly double the rate you pay for the first, and the good rooms in the Quarter and the Marigny go months out.
The first October weekend is the affordable one
The Crescent City Blues & BBQ Festival takes over Lafayette Square in the Central Business District from Friday 9 to Sunday 11 October, and it costs nothing to walk into. It is run by the Jazz & Heritage Foundation, the same people behind Jazz Fest, which tells you what the booking standard is: a proper festival stage with a free open lawn in front of it, not a street fair with a busker.
For a large group this is the easiest day in the whole month. There is no ticket to co-ordinate, no door, no dress code, and nobody has to arrive at the same time as anybody else. You pick a tree, you rotate through the food stalls, and people peel off when they want to. If you would rather not stand all weekend, VIP weekend passes are sold through Eventbrite and buy you seating near the front, a hospitality lounge, and food and drink included for the two days, which is worth it if your group skews towards wanting a chair and a shorter bar queue.
Come this weekend if the Halloween machinery is not the point of the trip. Hotel rates have not climbed yet, restaurant tables are gettable at a civilised hour, and the haunted houses are already open.
A mid-month weekend that works with small children
Boo at the Zoo at Audubon Zoo, Uptown, runs Friday 16 to Sunday 18 October and only those three days. Tickets are timed, 10am to 5pm, at roughly $38 for non-members and around $12 if you hold an Audubon membership. Early-bird pricing closes at the end of the summer, so by October you are paying the full rate. It funds Manning Family Children's, and it sells through, so buy before you fly rather than on the morning.
Get there on the St Charles streetcar rather than in a car. It is slower (allow the better part of an hour from Canal Street), but the ride up through the oak tunnel and the Garden District is a genuine piece of the trip rather than a transfer, and parking near the park on an event weekend is its own small misery. This is the most manageable option in the month for anyone travelling with under-eights, and it is over by teatime.
Saturday 24 October belongs to the skeletons
Krewe of BOO!, the city's official Halloween parade, rolls at 6:30pm on Saturday 24 October from Elysian Fields Avenue at the edge of the Marigny, through the French Quarter, and finishes on Andrew Higgins Drive in the Warehouse District. It is free, there is no ticket and no door policy, and a group of any size can simply stand on the route. This is the fixed point to build the trip around. If you book one weekend for the parade, book it now, because the Quarter fills for it.
Where you stand matters more than when you arrive. The Quarter stretch is the crowded middle and the throws are best there, but it is also where you will be four deep with strangers and unable to move for two hours. The Elysian Fields end near the start and the Higgins Drive end near the finish are calmer, which is what you want with a pushchair, a wheelchair, or anyone who needs to get out. Riding a float means krewe membership, so that is a plan for a future year, not this one. The same operator runs a Zombie Run in the morning and a ticketed Monster Mash afterparty in the Warehouse District once the parade has passed.
Fill the afternoon before it with Boo Carré Halloween Haunt in the French Market District, at the lower end of the Quarter. It is free, daytime and drop-in, children in costume collect a tote and trick-or-treat around the district's shops, and it is a few blocks from the parade route, so multi-family groups can do the whole day on foot without a single transfer.
Films in the gaps between parades
The New Orleans Film Festival runs in person from Thursday 22 to Tuesday 27 October across the Contemporary Arts Center in the Warehouse District, The Broad in Mid-City and the Prytania Uptown. The 37th edition is Oscar-qualifying, so the shorts and documentary programmes are competitive and premieres sell out.
It sells All Access, Unlimited Film, Student and Teacher and virtual passes, plus single tickets. Screenings are seated and unreserved blocks disappear, so a group that wants to sit together should buy together and early. This is the best thing in October for a couple who want an evening that is not a costume, and it slots into the daylight hours and the weeknights around Krewe of Boo weekend without competing with anything.
Pick two of the three costume balls
The last weekend has three, and doing all three in forty-eight hours is a way to enjoy none of them properly.
Anne Rice Vampire Lestat Fan Club Ball comes first, on Friday 30 October, the 38th annual edition and fifty years since Interview with the Vampire. It is ticketed through Eventbrite with an open bar and specialty cocktails included, which is why the price is premium, and the ballroom format mixes seating and standing, so a group that books together stays together. Committed Rice readers do this one and the Endless Night ball on consecutive nights; they are separate organisations and separate tickets.
Endless Night: New Orleans Vampire Ball takes Halloween night itself, 10pm to 4am, with VIP doors at 9pm and a Carnevale Masquerade theme for 2026. GA runs into the tens of dollars and the VIP tiers considerably more, both through Eventbrite. Costume is effectively the dress code, so plan the outfit before you book the ticket, and bring it with you rather than trusting a Bourbon Street shop on the day. If half your group wants the spectacle without the late night or the outlay, the free daytime Bazaar on 30 and 31 October lets them drift through without a ball ticket at all.
Halloween New Orleans, known as HNO, is the LGBTQ+ charity weekend and runs 30 October to 1 November: the Lazarus Ball gala at The Barnett on the Friday, the main party at The Fillmore on Halloween night, and a tea dance on the Sunday to land the weekend gently. Tickets are per event through Eventbrite with weekend packages, friend groups are the norm rather than the exception, and the door is explicitly for saints, sinners and everyone in between. Every dollar goes to Project Lazarus, which houses people living with HIV/AIDS, so this is the one weekend where the ticket price is doing something after the music stops.
A Dracula you can watch without a costume
New Orleans Ballet Theatre brings Oliver Halkowich's Dracula to the Orpheum in the CBD from Thursday 29 to Saturday 31 October, including a 2pm matinee on Halloween itself. Seating is reserved through Ticketmaster and group blocks are straightforward to buy in advance, which makes it the least fraught booking of the weekend.
Use the matinee. It fills the flat part of Halloween afternoon, after lunch and before the streets take over, with something a mixed-age group can all attend, and you walk out into the CBD at a point where the evening has not started yet and you can still get a table. It is also the only serious Halloween-weekend night out here that asks nothing of you sartorially beyond a shirt.
Where October stops being a costume party
Voodoo Authentica of New Orleans Cultural Center & Collection in the French Quarter holds its VoodooFest from 11am to 7pm on Saturday 31 October, free, open-air and drop-in, with Haitian and Ghanaian practitioners, Bamboula 2000 playing, and free food. This is the genuine article and the correct antidote to the voodoo tat sold two blocks over. The shop itself is small, so a group should spread out on the street side rather than pile through the door.
Hermann-Grima + Gallier Historic Houses, also in the Quarter, redress the whole house for Creole death and mourning customs for the month. The daytime Creole Death and Mourning tour is inexpensive and runs hourly; the after-hours Twilight Mourning Tour is $65, includes St Louis Cemetery No. 1 and a cocktail, is capped in size and is 15 and over. There is a proper group-visits and private-tour programme on 504 525-5661 if you are more than a handful of people. If you only do one thing in October that explains why this city treats death the way it does, do this.
Save Our Cemeteries is the city's only nonprofit cemetery tour operator, and the fee (around $25 to $30 a head, tours running about 45 minutes) goes back into restoring the tombs. Book ahead, because St Louis No. 1 is closed to unaccompanied visitors and you legally cannot wander in alone; you go with a licensed guide or not at all. Set one expectation before you buy: Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 in the Garden District has been under restoration, and many tours still meet at its gates rather than going inside. Private and group bookings are available.
Two haunted houses worth the drive
The Mortuary Haunted Mansion sits on Canal Street out towards Mid-City and runs from 19 September to 13 November, Thursday to Sunday most weeks and every single night from 25 to 31 October. Tickets are timed and online with a GA and a VIP skip-the-line tier, and you should buy the slot in advance, because walk-up queues in that last week are long enough to eat an evening. The same team runs an hour-long storytelling programme in the building, Tales of the Macabre, which is the option for anyone in the group who wants the history of the place without being chased through it.
New Orleans Nightmare Haunted House is out past the parish line, a short drive from downtown, on select nights from 19 September to 1 November. It is the better one for adult groups: there is a dedicated group rates page, a bookable VIP Director's Cut in which your group controls the scares, escape-room and respawn add-ons, and a 21-plus Secret Bar. The 2026 run includes an officially licensed Friday the 13th Jason Universe walkthrough. One correction worth carrying: this is the site of the old House of Shock, which closed permanently, so do not go looking for it. You will need a car or a rideshare both ways, and you should book the ride back rather than assume one appears at midnight.
The nights between the big ones
Preservation Hall in the French Quarter is the reliable anchor on the evenings that have no parade and no ball. Sets run nightly, each ticket covers one 45-minute set, and it is advance online only, so turning up hopefully at 8pm does not work. Expect roughly $25 to $50 depending on whether you are seated or standing. It is all ages, and for late October every set on the calendar goes, so book it the same day you book the flights. Private hire for groups is handled through their events programme.
Cajun Encounters Tour Company runs from 941 Decatur Street in the Quarter, seven nights a week, year-round, with hotel pickups and a group-travel desk. The company is family-owned and 25 years in. The night ghost bus, from around $55 a head, covers ground no walking tour can reach, which is the honest argument for it over the dozen lantern-carriers in the Quarter. Their Manchac swamp run is the classic haunted-bayou day trip and the best use of a spare daylight weekday.
The dull, useful part
Stay in the Quarter, the Marigny or the Warehouse District and you can walk to almost everything above. The St Charles streetcar handles Uptown and the zoo; Mid-City and the out-of-parish haunted house need a rideshare, and you should book the return leg before you go in. On the evening of Saturday 24 October the Quarter is closed to traffic for the parade, so do not plan to drive anywhere between about 5pm and 10pm, and expect rideshare surge on the fringes afterwards.
Card works nearly everywhere, but carry small notes for street festival vendors, for tipping guides and for the musicians, who are paid in the hat. Two events are strictly online-only in advance: Preservation Hall and the timed haunted house slots. Two of the biggest days, Krewe of Boo and VoodooFest, cost nothing at all.
Budget it in two layers. The free spine of the month is the parade, Boo Carré, VoodooFest and the Blues and BBQ festival. On top of that, reckon on $25 to $30 for a cemetery tour, $65 for the Twilight Mourning Tour, about $38 for the zoo, around $55 for the ghost bus, $25 to $50 for a set at Preservation Hall, and anything from a few tens of dollars to several hundred for the balls depending on tier. Book the 24th and the 31st first, book the zoo and the ballet next, and leave the weeknights loose. For restaurants, districts and what to do with the days in between, start with the New Orleans guide.
