5 Best Things to Do in Mexico City During Day of the Dead

On Sunday 25 October 2026 from 18:00, tens of thousands of people in full Catrina make-up walk from the Angel de la Independencia down Paseo de la Reforma, Avenida Juarez and 5 de Mayo to the Zocalo. This is the 13th edition of the Mega Procesion de Catrinas, and unlike the city's official parade it is organised by a civil association rather than the government. La Catrina, the elegant skeleton in a feathered hat, comes from a 1910 etching by Jose Guadalupe Posada and was named by Diego Rivera decades later.

Watching from the pavement is free. Walking in it costs a symbolic 25 peso contribution and an online registration in one of 25 contingent categories, which is the version worth doing: the point of this event is that the participants outnumber the spectators. Make-up stands set up near the Angel in the afternoon, and full Catrina face paint takes 20 to 40 minutes. Wear shoes you can cover 4 km in, because there is no drop-out point once the procession fills Reforma.

Two details make the difference between watching and taking part. The make-up stalls near the Angel de la Independencia work fast but queue badly after 17:00, and the procession is genuinely long, covering roughly 4 km of Paseo de la Reforma, Avenida Juarez and 5 de Mayo on foot. If you are marching, carry water and a small bag you can hold rather than a rucksack, because the contingents move slowly and stop often for photographs along the way.

Pro Tip: Register weeks ahead and arrive at the Angel by 16:30, not 18:00. The make-up queues are long by 17:00, and the light between 18:00 and 18:45 in late October is the only window where you get the procession lit and the sky still blue.

The Gran Desfile de Dia de Muertos is the headline act, confirmed for Saturday 31 October 2026 and organised by the Secretaria de Cultura de la Ciudad de Mexico. It runs about 10 km from Bosque de Chapultepec along Paseo de la Reforma, Avenida Juarez, Eje Central and 5 de Mayo to the Zocalo, taking roughly four hours. The 2026 edition works around three themes, prehispanic roots, Mexican popular culture and tributes to notable figures, with homages to Juan Gabriel and Jose Alfredo Jimenez.

It is free and there is no seating. The city counts past attendance in the hundreds of thousands, and the official start time for 2026 had not been published as of early September, though recent editions have set off in the early afternoon. Metrobus Line 7, which normally runs the length of Reforma, closes on parade day, so plan on the Metro. Be honest with yourself about the format: you will hold one spot for two hours and see the parade pass once, which is a different experience from wandering a festival.

Pro Tip: Pick a cross street on Reforma between Rio Mississippi and Bucareli rather than the Angel roundabout or the Zocalo, both of which fill three hours early. Confirm the start time on the Secretaria de Cultura site in mid-October, then arrive two hours before it.

On the night of 1 November, families in the village of San Andres Mixquic fill the Panteon de San Andres with candles and cempasuchil marigolds and sit with their dead until dawn. La Alumbrada, the lighting, is the closest thing in Mexico City to the tradition UNESCO inscribed on its Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2008. Entry to the cemetery and to every activity in the Tlahuac festival programme is free, and the ofrenda displays around the sixteenth-century Templo y Ex Convento de San Andres Apostol stay up for over a week.

Getting there is the hard part and no guide should pretend otherwise. Take Metro Line 12 to its Tlahuac terminus, then RTP route 149 or a Tlahuac to Mixquic combi for another 45 to 70 minutes. Total cost is under 50 pesos each way, but Tlahuac station and the approach road saturate completely on 1 November, so budget two hours in each direction. This is a working vigil, not a show. Photograph the graves only with permission, keep your voice down near families, and do not step over an ofrenda to get an angle.

The village programme runs wider than the vigil itself. Tlahuac stages a monumental ofrenda, market stalls and folk performances around the church square across the first days of November, all free, and the ex-convent atrium is worth 20 minutes in daylight before the crowds arrive. Food stalls sell pan de muerto and atole through the night, which matters because there is nowhere else to eat once the roads clog.

Pro Tip: Go out in the late afternoon of 1 November rather than after dark, watch the candles being lit around 19:00, and leave by 22:00 before the return crush. If two hours each way sounds unappealing, the vigils at San Gregorio Atlapulco in Xochimilco are 40 minutes closer and far quieter.

The best-value entry on this list, because it costs nothing, needs no ticket and stands for over a week. From the last days of October until 2 November the city installs its Ofrenda Monumental across the Plaza de la Constitucion, built by more than a hundred artisans and billed as the largest altar in the country. In 2025 it ran from 25 October to 2 November; the exact 2026 dates were still unpublished in early September. It is at its best after dark, when the illumination goes on and the Catedral Metropolitana sits behind it.

Pair it with the UNAM Megaofrenda, and note the change that catches out older guides: the university's festival no longer takes place at Las Islas on the Ciudad Universitaria campus. It moved into the Centro Historico, with the 2025 edition staged at the Palacio de la Escuela de Medicina on Plaza Santo Domingo, a 10 minute walk north of the Zocalo. Both are free. Between them you can see a state-scale altar and a student-built one in a single evening, which is the cheapest and most reliable Dia de Muertos experience the city offers.

Pro Tip: Walk the Zocalo altar between 20:00 and 22:00 on a weekday, not at the weekend. Then take Republica de Brasil north to Plaza Santo Domingo, where the plaza's arcade of public scribes is still working and there is no queue for anything.