Puerto Rican Day Parade Fills Fifth Avenue With Pride, Politicians
With Daddy Yankee as Grand Marshal and the Knicks playing that night, exuberance was in the air, all hail the red, white and blue—and orange!
| 22 Jun 2026 | 11:12
Puerto Rican Day Parade 2026 celebrated Boricuans and the Knicks in abundance. (
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Puerto Rican Day Parade inspired Mayor Mamdani to wear a No. 3 Josh Hart Knicks jersey. (
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Puerto Richan Day Parade, Tricia Shimamura in green, Mayor in Knicks jersey in tie. (
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Puerto Rican Day parade included a Court officer holding a No. 34 Charles Oakley Knicks jersey. (
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Puerto Rican Day Parade included many people showing both Boricuan and Knicks pride. (
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Comptroller Jumaane Williams with a Knicks medallion and black and white Puerto Rican nationalist flag. (
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Cops at the Puerto Rican love the Knicks too. (
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Puerto Rican Day Parade included Borough President Mark Levine in a Knicks hat. (
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Puerto Rican Day Parade brough saw Nydia Velazquez campaigning for Antonio Reynoso. (
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Puerto Rican Day Parade included Congressman Adriano Espaillat marching. (
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Puerto Rican Day Parade inlcuded a skeleton riding a PR flag-adorned bicycle. (
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Hundreds of thousands of impassioned Nuyoricans and their friends jammed the streets of Fifth Avenue June 14 for what’s officially called the National Puerto Rican Day Parade. Nearly everyone drops the national, though this year’s event could easily have been mistaken as tri-national, celebrating Puerto Rico, the United States—and the New York Knicks.
That Puerto Rico has never been a nation, per se—it’s a U.S. territory, acquired in 1898 after the Spanish-American War and its residents have been U.S. citizens since 1917—partially explains fervor of the parade attendees. It definitely explains the two different Puerto Rican flags at the parade. By far the more common one is the official red, white and blue design of five stripes and an equilateral triangle with a five-pointed star inside. This flag adorned nearly every body part, somewhere, and most vehicles at the parade, which ran north from 44th to 79th streets.
Here and there one also saw the black and white version of the same design, which represents the Puerto Rican nationalist movement. Because of the movement’s historic link with terrorism, including the deadly January 24, 1975 Fraunces Tavern bombing, this banner is highly controversial and its presence at the parade is more tolerated than encouraged. With one known exception—Public Advocate Jumaane Williams—no parade VIP or politician was seen with a black and white Puerto Rican flag.
Many thousands of paradegoers, including the Public Advocate and a sizable number of the press corps, were proudly adorned in Knicks gear: jerseys, shorts, hats, medallions and more in anticipation of that evening’s NBA Finals Game 5 against the Spurs in San Antonio. Also represented, though less abundantly, were the jerseys of Roberto Clemente, the revered Puerto Rican Major Leage Baseball star who died, aged 38, in a plane crash while on a humanitarian mission, and the Puerto Rican national baseball team.
Weather for the parade was near perfect, with the temperature around 80 degrees with low humidity, allowing ample skin to be displayed, including a wide range of Puerto Rican-themed tattoos and body painting, with little fear of heat collapse. Indeed, so pleasant was the late morning, even politicians were putting in extra time along the route, including Attorney General Letitia James, who was unguardedly dancing to Latin music blasting from Governor Kathy Hochul’s sound truck while the AG patiently awaited the line of march.
Other politicians present included Borough President Mark Levine in a black Knicks hat, NYS Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, Senator Charles Schumer, Congressman Dan Goldman and a City Council delegation including Manhattanites Gale Brewer and Elsie Encarnacion.
Campaign representatives for uptown Congressman Adriano Espaillat were also out and about, working the crowd. It took little prompting to learn that the Democratic primary for NY-13, where the Dominican-born Espaillat is being challenged by Democratic Socialists of America (D.S.A.) challenger, Darializa Avila Chevalier is extremely bitter, even more than recent New York Times headline (“Mamdani Vowed to Back Espaillat. Now He’s Endorsing a D.S.A. Challenger.”) suggested.
Though Chevalier’s social media embraces the Knicks, it doesn’t appear she attended the Puerto Rican Day parade, as Espaillat did, walking up Fifth Avenue in a pink linen shirt and black Knicks cap.
One person who exuberantly embraced the parade, the Knicks and D.S.A. is Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Wearing a No. 3 Josh Hart jersey over a white shirt and tie, Mamdani thrilled the Knicks-mad crowd, and seemingly surprised both his civilian cordon rope handlers and his large NYPD security detail to leave the protective border of the cordon, which included his Puerto Rican-Japanese Parks Commissioner, Tricia Shimamura—and high five the crowd. Getting a positive reaction, Hizzoner did this repeatedly, every few blocks, garnering roaring cheers from the crowd, concerned looks from cops and confusion from his rope handlers.
Quipped one reporter to a veteran Irish-American cop, “He didn’t do that at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade!”
”Nope,” agreed the veteran officer.