City Event: The Lord Mayor's Show 2023

The Lord Mayor’s Show is 805 years old. It has been a fixture of London life for centuries, from its origins as a way to make the city behave through medieval carnival and imperial spectacle to become the world’s greatest unrehearsed civic procession and its longest-running TV show.

The modern Show is a joyful and diverse civic parade of over 6000 people, with dozens of marching bands, military detachments, carriages, dance troupes, inflatables, giant contraptions and ceremonial displays. Every year is different and surprising, combining London’s ancient pomp, rowdy patchwork heritage and modern dynamism to create a spectacle unlike anything else in the world.

Every year the newly elected Lord Mayor is required, by the Royal Charter issued in 1215, to “leave the safety of the City, travel upriver to Westminster and swear loyalty to the Sovereign”. 

The Lord Mayor has now made that journey nearly 700 times, despite plagues, fires and countless wars, and pledged his or her loyalty to 34 kings and queens of England. The early river-borne journeys gave rise to the term ‘Float’ applied to procession exhibits.