For three Carnival-less years, the streets of west London have stayed conspicuously quiet over the August bank holiday weekend. From tomorrow, that’s all set to change, as Europe’s biggest street party welcomes millions of revellers back to Notting Hill for the first time since 2019.
This will be the 54th edition of Carnival since it first hit the streets in 1966 as a celebratory balm to soothe racial and cultural tensions in the area. Deeply rooted in British-Caribbean culture, it has now grown into something that attracts hundreds of thousands of foreign tourists and generates around £120million for the London economy — but still holds those values of togetherness at its core.
