It’s time to party like it’s 1973, Knicks fans! For the first time in franchise history, the New York Knicks are throwing a championship parade. Yes, this is their third NBA championship, but the winning teams in the 1970s never got an official parade (womp, womp!).
After the Knicks eliminated the San Antonio Spurs 94-90 in Game 5 of the NBA Finals on Saturday to win their first title since 1973, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that the 2026 champions would be celebrated with a proper ticker-tape parade through lower Manhattan.
What is a ticker-tape parade, you ask? It got its name from the thinstrips of paper that telegraphs would print stock market data on. During parades, people on Wall Street would throw out of windows in lieu of confetti . Ticker-tape parades became a tradition after the October 1886 parade to celebrate the dedication of the Statue of Liberty.
Here’s what else we know about the parade.
When and where
The parade is set to start at 10 a.m. ET on Thursday, June 18.
“One of the key things we wanted to make sure was that players and their families could be here,” Mamdani told NY1 on Monday. The mayor, a lifelong Knicks fan, has been one of the team’s most vocal celebrants throughout the playoffs, including signing a tongue-in-cheek “executive order” that repealed children’s bedtimes during the finals.
Mamdani acknowledged that Thursday is also the day of the New York Regents exams, standardized tests that high school students take for core subjects. “My encouragement would be that you should still be taking the Regents,” he advised New York City students. “Unlike the executive order for bedtimes, this is something I cannot repeal.”
The parade will travel north through the Financial District, from about Battery Park to City Hall. It’ll go up the Canyon of Heroes — aka Broadway — which is marked with plaques in the ground commemorating past ticker-tape parades. While the parades mostly celebrate sports championship victories these days, they used to honor heroic astronauts like John Glenn, visiting presidents of foreign countries, Olympians and even Albert Einstein.
A ticker-tape parade to celebrate the Mets winning the World Series in 1986. Today, ticker tape has been replaced by other forms of paper.
(Joe Sohm/Visions of America via Getty Images)
Once the floats reach City Hall on Thursday, Mamdani will preside over a ceremony to present NBA Finals MVP Jalen Brunson and his teammates with the Keys to the City.
Kids going to school on Thursday won’t have to miss out on all the Knicks fun. The Children’s Museum of Manhattan is hosting a “kid-sized” ticker tape parade on Wednesday at 4 p.m. ET on West 83rd St. between Broadway and Amsterdam Ave. Comedian and actor Amy Schumer and author Jessica Seinfeld will be the grand marshals.
The city will light up Thursday night
Three city buildings — Manhattan City Hall, the David N. Dinkins Municipal Building and Brooklyn’s Borough Hall — will be lit up in Knicks blue and orange that night, the mayor’s office said.
The Empire State Building, the JPMorgan Chase Building and One Vanderbilt in New York City illuminate in the colors of the New York Knicks behind the Statue of Liberty.
(Gary Hershorn via Getty Images)
How to watch
Knicks fans who aren’t able to make it to downtown Manhattan on Thursday will be able to watch it live on major New York City television stations, including ABC7 New York and NBC 4 New York, as well as sports networks like MSG Network. Official livestreams are also expected on NYC.gov and the mayoral office’s social media channels.
Why this will be the first ticker-tape parade for the Knicks
The Knicks haven’t won an NBA championship since 1973, when Walt Frazier and Willis Reed led the team to its second title. The Knicks won their historic first title in 1970, defeating the Los Angeles Lakers in a seven-game series.
At that time, New York City Mayor John Lindsay halted ticker-tape parades for sports teams, citing disruptions to traffic and shopping. So neither winning team in 1970 or 1973 received a parade after their wins, but were recognized in ceremonies at Gracie Mansion and City Hall.
A generation of New York basketball fans has also grown up without the Knicks winning a championship, making Thursday’s celebration the kind of citywide moment some Knicks fans have been waiting for their entire lives.
Brunson scored 45 points in Saturday’s clincher to seal the championship, matching Michael Jordan’s record for the most points scored by any player in a title-clinching game.
“There’s going to be players; there’s going to be city employees; there are going to be so many people for whom this has been a dream for their entire life,” Mamdani told NY1. “I would encourage people to come as early as they can. … This is a moment so many have been waiting for, and I think we may very well see the largest parade in our city’s history.”
