The 37th Shanghai Tourism Festival Parade in 2026 kicked off on the Bund

China News Service, Shanghai, September 12 (Reporter Li Jiajia) Along with the opening song and dance of "Invitation from Shanghai" and the countdown by the audience, the "Shanghai Xiaoyou" bus drove into the venue. On the evening of the 12th, the Huangpu River was lit up with bright lights, and the 37th Shanghai Tourism Festival Parade in 2026 kicked off here.

With the theme of "Date in Shanghai, Beautiful Encounter", this parade vividly interprets the spirit of Shanghai and the style of the times through three major chapters: "Beautiful City", "Innovative City" and "People's City". Tourists at home and abroad gathered on the banks of the Pujiang River to jointly experience the unique charm of Shanghai as China’s first stop for inbound tourism, the first choice for urban tourism, and a demonstration area for the deep integration of culture and tourism.

At night, the century-old buildings on the Bund in Shanghai turned into a natural stage backdrop, and the parade marched slowly along the Zhongshan East Road. Theme park troupes such as Shanghai Disney, Legoland, and Haichang Ocean Park, overseas performance troupes from Peru, Mexico, Spain, Thailand, etc., and intangible cultural heritage teams such as Sanming Taining Plum Forest Opera, Guangdong Yingge and Dance, and Yunnan Gengma Song and Dance took turns to perform. Floats with multiple themes linking Jiangnan ancient towns, maritime cuteness, financial technology, counterpart support, time-honored intangible cultural heritage brands, etc. drove past in sequence, interacting enthusiastically with citizens and tourists.

On the evening of September 12, with bright lights along the Huangpu River, the 37th Shanghai Tourism Festival Parade in 2026 kicked off at the Zhongshan East 1st Road Bund. Photo by China News Service reporter Zhang Hengwei

This year's parade uses technology to empower cultural tourism and uses upgraded mapping light and shadow technology. It not only uses the century-old Shanghai Pudong Development Bank Building as a dynamic projection screen, but also achieves simultaneous resonance of floats, performance formations and light and shadow shows, allowing the city's stories to be vividly presented on the building's facade. Technological highlights also run through the float parade. For example, the Shi Zhihang float introduced an embodied intelligent humanoid robot into the parade scene. The robot transformed into a tour guide and made drinks on site.

In response to the upcoming 48th World Skills Competition, this parade specially arranged a float linked to the theme of the World Skills Competition, and invited front-line practitioners in the cultural, commercial, tourism and sports exhibition industry and city recommendation officer representatives who participated in the service guarantee of the World Competition to make a joint appearance, and issued an invitation to tourists at home and abroad to "Welcome to the World Competition and visit Shanghai". Focusing on serving the World Games, Shanghai has formed "Three Hundreds", namely 100 "Shanghai Small Tour" service center locations, 100 city recommendation officers who provide tour guide services in small languages ​​​​for World Games guests, and 100 high-quality tourist routes. During the World Championships, Shanghai will coordinate resources such as key reception hotels, inbound tourist-friendly restaurants, and specialty shopping districts, launch Shanghai Pass cards special for the World Championships, hold various performances and exhibitions, promote the conversion of event traffic into consumption retention, and achieve the goal of welcoming the world to sharing between hosts and guests.

This year's Shanghai Tourism Festival continues the "one season and two seasons" festival format. Since the launch of the "Summer Tourism Season", the popularity of cultural and museum tourism in Shanghai has continued to rise; the "Classic Event Season" will last until October 6, focusing on the pursuit of Shanghai style, dazzling attraction, pleasure in Shanghai, colorful collections, boundless artistic realm, and magical city mirror six The major theme section has launched more than 170 special activities, and also linked six cross-provincial sub-venues in Wuxi, Jiangsu, Ningbo, Zhejiang, Sanming, Fujian, Huaihua, Hunan, Kashgar, Xinjiang, and Changting, Fujian to enrich the supply of cultural tourism products. We sincerely invite tourists from home and abroad to come to Shanghai to enjoy the cultural tourism feast and share a wonderful encounter.