What is mas?

Mas is short for masquerade. To play mas is to join a costumed band and take to the road with it.

A mas band presents a theme each year, split into sections, and each section has its own costume. People register with a band and choose the section they want to play in.

Mas is often described as pretty mas, with feathers, beads and modern costumes, or traditional mas, which keeps historic characters alive.

J'ouvert comes from the French for daybreak. It is the pre-dawn start of carnival, rooted in the Canboulay processions, with paint, mud and powder.

The Jab Molassie is a devil figure covered in oil, paint or molasses and tied to J'ouvert. The Midnight Robber wears a wide-brimmed hat and delivers boastful speeches. Dame Lorraine is a satirical figure that mocks upper-class dress and manners. The Moko Jumbie is a stilt-walker with West African roots.

Each band builds a King and a Queen: large showpiece costumes, each worn by one person, judged on how well they portray the band's theme, on craftsmanship, stage presentation and movement. In Toronto the King and Queen showcase takes place at Lamport Stadium the night before the Grand Parade.

The first Caribana parade was held in 1967 for Canada's centennial. Since the early 1990s the parade has started at Exhibition Place and run along Lake Shore Boulevard, on the Simcoe Day long weekend at the start of August.

Wikipedia lists a Band of the Year winner for most years, and the ten bands the organizer lists for 2026 are in our directory.