Today, Wednesday, November 11, 2026, Fifth Avenue in New York City belongs to America’s veterans. At 12:30 p.m., the 107th Veterans Day Parade steps off from Fifth Avenue at 26th Street and marches north into Midtown, and leading it all is a woman who has spent her life serving her country in two uniforms at once: retired Navy Captain and NASA astronaut Sunita “Suni” Williams. The parade lands in the year America marks its 250th birthday, and the woman at the front of it has flown to space three times. That is a fitting way to honor the people who have kept this country free for two and a half centuries.
The parade is the nation’s largest Veterans Day event, produced every year by the United War Veterans Council. More than 280 marching units and more than 20,000 marchers are expected to take part, along with more than 25 floats, veterans groups from every branch of the military, active-duty service members, military bands, and youth cadets. The route runs about 1.1 miles up Fifth Avenue, from 26th Street toward 45th Street, and the march is expected to run until about 3:30 p.m., rain or shine. WABC-TV carries the parade live from 12:30 p.m., with streaming on its digital platforms, so anyone who cannot get to Manhattan can still watch every unit pass.
Before the parade steps off, the day begins quietly. At 10:55 a.m., the annual wreath-laying ceremony takes place in Madison Square Park, on Fifth Avenue between East 23rd and East 24th Streets, just a few blocks from the starting line. It is the solemn counterweight to the celebration that follows: a moment to remember the fallen before the city turns out to thank the living.
The 107th Parade: Route, Time, and What to Expect
If you are heading out to watch, here is what you need to know. The parade steps off at 12:30 p.m. from Fifth Avenue at 26th Street and moves north up Fifth Avenue, with marchers dispersing along 45th Street between Sixth Avenue and Madison Avenue. Fifth Avenue is closed to traffic between 25th Street and 48th Street for the route, and alternate side parking rules are suspended for the day, though parking meters stay in effect. New York City public schools are closed for the holiday.
The best viewing spots are along Fifth Avenue in the 30s and 40s. Get there early: the crowds build fast once the wreath-laying ends, and the streets around Midtown will be packed by noon.
This year’s parade carries extra meaning. The United War Veterans Council notes that the 2026 parade marks the 250th birthday of the United States, whose independence was secured and preserved by the service of its armed forces. It also falls in a year that marks the 85th anniversary of America’s entry into World War II and the 35th anniversary of Operation Desert Storm. That sweep of history, from the founding generation to the veterans of the Gulf War, is exactly what the parade is built to show: generation after generation of Americans who put on the uniform.
The Navy is this year’s featured service, which makes the choice of grand marshal especially fitting. The Navy’s presence in the city this week includes the USS San Antonio, in New York for Fleet Week events, a reminder that the sea service’s connection to this city runs deep. Sailors will be marching, and the crowds will be cheering for them, just as they have for more than a century of Fifth Avenue parades.
Meet Grand Marshal Suni Williams
Sunita “Suni” Williams is a retired U.S. Navy captain and a retired NASA astronaut, and her record in both services is extraordinary. The United War Veterans Council announced her as grand marshal on October 13, 2026, the 251st anniversary of the U.S. Navy, a date chosen on purpose. Williams had actually been named for the honor in 2025, but she was unable to take part. Last year at this time, she was 250 miles above Earth, in the middle of an unexpectedly long stay aboard the International Space Station after Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft ran into thruster trouble. This year, she is back on solid ground, leading the parade on foot down Fifth Avenue.
Williams was selected as a NASA astronaut in 1998, after a Navy career as a helicopter pilot and test pilot. She flew to space three times and logged 608 days in orbit, the second-highest cumulative total of any NASA astronaut, behind only Peggy Whitson. She completed nine spacewalks totaling 62 hours and 6 minutes, the most spacewalk time ever logged by a woman. She commanded the International Space Station twice, during Expedition 33 and Expedition 72, becoming only the second woman to lead the orbital laboratory. She also became the first woman to fly on a flight test of an orbital spacecraft, piloting Boeing’s Starliner on its first crewed flight in June 2024, and the first person to run a marathon in space, finishing the Boston Marathon on a treadmill aboard the station in 2007.
Her most recent mission is the one most Americans remember. Williams and fellow astronaut Butch Wilmore launched aboard Starliner on June 5, 2024, for what was supposed to be a short test flight. Technical problems kept them aboard the station for 286 days, and they finally returned to Earth on March 18, 2025, aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon as part of the Crew-9 mission. Williams retired from NASA effective December 27, 2025, after 27 years with the agency, closing one of the most accomplished careers in human spaceflight.
Before NASA, Williams served in the Navy, retiring as a captain with more than 4,000 flight hours across 40 different aircraft. She is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and holds a master’s degree in engineering management from Florida Institute of Technology. Born in Euclid, Ohio, and raised in Needham, Massachusetts, she is the daughter of an Indian-American father and a Slovenian-American mother.
Serving as honorary marshal is Navy veteran Vicki Bello, manager of community and veterans programs for the Theatre Development Fund. Bello served in the Naval Reserve at Fort Schuyler in the Bronx, and her work now connects veterans with the arts. The pairing of Williams and Bello puts two Navy veterans at the front of a parade whose featured service is the Navy, and it says something about how the parade sees service: not only in combat and in space, but in the community work veterans do when they come home.
A Parade Inside America’s 250th Birthday Year
The 2026 parade is not just another year of the march. It arrives as the United States marks its 250th birthday, and the organizers have leaned into that. The parade’s own materials describe this year’s march as a celebration of a nation whose independence was secured and preserved by the service of its armed forces, and that framing is visible in the units on the street: veterans of every era, from World War II to the present day, marching in the same column.
It is the 85th anniversary of America’s entry into World War II, after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 drew the United States into the war. The veterans of that war are now in their late 90s and beyond, and every parade that still includes them is a gift. It is also the 35th anniversary of Operation Desert Storm, the 1991 campaign that liberated Kuwait. Between those two bookends sit Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and the men and women who served in each.
That is what makes the Fifth Avenue parade different from a fireworks show or a concert. It is a living timeline. When a World War II veteran rides in a vehicle near the front and a recently returned service member marches behind, the crowd is watching 85 years of American history walk past in about two hours. In a 250th birthday year, that matters even more.
At Arlington: The Nation’s Wreath-Laying
While New York marches, the nation’s official observance takes place at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. The annual Presidential Armed Forces Full Honor Wreath-Laying Ceremony is held at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where the official procession, including President Donald Trump, moves to the plaza to place the wreath. Vice President JD Vance, himself a former Marine, takes part in the ceremony as well. A lone bugler plays Taps to close the ceremony, one of the most moving sounds in American public life.
The ceremony at the Tomb itself is limited to official participants, a protocol in place since 2020, but the public can still observe the day’s program, including the prelude performance and the formal observance, for free on a first-come, first-served basis inside the Memorial Amphitheater. The observance there begins at 11 a.m., the hour the guns fell silent in 1918.
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier has stood at Arlington for more than a century. An unidentified American soldier from World War I was buried there in 1921, and the site has since become the resting place for unknown soldiers from later wars as well. The Tomb Guard, soldiers of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, known as the Old Guard, keep a constant vigil. On Veterans Day, the wreath-laying at the Tomb is the country’s way of saying, in a single gesture, that no service member is forgotten.
What Veterans Day Actually Commemorates
Veterans Day began as Armistice Day. World War I ended when an armistice, a temporary cessation of hostilities, took effect at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month: 11 a.m. on November 11, 1918. In November 1919, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the first commemoration of Armistice Day, and Congress recognized the date in 1926. An act approved on May 13, 1938, made November 11 a legal holiday dedicated to the cause of world peace.
After World War II and the Korean War, the holiday’s meaning widened. In 1954, at the urging of veterans service organizations, Congress amended the 1938 act, replacing “Armistice” with “Veterans.” With President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s approval on June 1, 1954, November 11 became a day to honor American veterans of all wars.
There was one detour. Under the Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1968, Congress moved Veterans Day to the fourth Monday in October, and the first observance under the new law, on October 25, 1971, caused widespread confusion. Americans held fast to the historical date, and in 1975 President Gerald R. Ford signed legislation returning the observance to November 11, beginning in 1978. It has stayed there ever since, regardless of the day of the week.
It is worth remembering the distinction the day draws. Memorial Day, in May, honors those who died in military service. Veterans Day honors all who served, living and dead, in wartime or in peace. That is why the parade matters so much: it is a day for the living veteran standing on the sidewalk in a jacket covered in patches, for the family marching with a loved one’s photo, and for the kid in a cadet uniform who has not yet decided whether to enlist. The holiday belongs to all of them.
How to Watch and Honor the Day
If you are in New York, the parade is free to watch from the sidewalks along Fifth Avenue, and the television broadcast on WABC-TV begins at 12:30 p.m. for those watching from home. If you are anywhere else in the country, your own community almost certainly has its own ceremony: a wreath-laying at a local memorial, a school assembly, a small parade down Main Street. Those local events are where most Americans actually experience Veterans Day, and they deserve the same attention as the big march in Manhattan.
There are other simple ways to mark the day. Thank a veteran, and mean it. Ask about their service, and listen to the answer. Visit a veterans memorial. Fly the flag. Many businesses offer free meals and discounts to veterans today. If you want to do more than a gesture, the Department of Veterans Affairs and veterans service organizations can point you toward volunteer work, from driving veterans to medical appointments to helping with claims paperwork.
The parade will end around 3:30 p.m., the crowds will thin out, and Fifth Avenue will reopen to traffic. But the point of the day will linger: a retired astronaut who spent 608 days in space will have walked a mile down Fifth Avenue at the head of 20,000 marchers, and a nation will have spent a day remembering that its freedom was not free.
Frequently Asked Questions
What time does the 2026 NYC Veterans Day Parade start?
The parade steps off at 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, November 11, 2026, from Fifth Avenue at 26th Street, and marches north up Fifth Avenue toward 45th Street. The wreath-laying ceremony in Madison Square Park begins earlier, at 10:55 a.m.
Who is the grand marshal of the 2026 NYC Veterans Day Parade?
Retired Navy Captain and NASA astronaut Sunita “Suni” Williams is the grand marshal. She logged 608 days in space across three missions, commanded the International Space Station twice, and retired from NASA in December 2025 after 27 years. Navy veteran Vicki Bello serves as honorary marshal.
What is the route of the NYC Veterans Day Parade?
The parade marches north up Fifth Avenue from 26th Street to 45th Street, a route of about 1.1 miles. Fifth Avenue is closed to traffic between 25th and 48th Streets during the parade, and the march is expected to run until about 3:30 p.m.
Why is Veterans Day on November 11?
World War I ended when an armistice took effect at 11 a.m. on November 11, 1918, the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. The day was first observed as Armistice Day and renamed Veterans Day in 1954 to honor veterans of all wars.
Related reading
- Veterans Day History: The Story of Armistice Day
- U.S. Marine Corps Birthday: November 10 History
- Veterans Day 2026: Free Meals and Discounts Guide
Sources: United War Veterans Council: Grand Marshal Sunita Williams; Military.com: Suni Williams to Lead NYC Veterans Day Parade; NASA: Sunita L. Williams biography; U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs: History of Veterans Day; Military.com: Arlington Veterans Day Observance; Military.com: New York Veterans Day Parade.