Knicks championship parade New York: Everything you need to know

The New York Knicks celebrated their 2026 NBA Championship with a historic ticker-tape parade on June 18.

The event marked the Knicks' first NBA title, since 1973 and their first-ever ticker-tape parade. 

In the early hours of Thursday morning, droves of New Yorkers, sports fans and revelers alike poured into the streets of Lower Manhattan to celebrate an extraordinary milestone in the city’s history, the Knicks’ first N.B.A. championship win in two generations.

The event saw a record-breaking security deployment, and viewing areas were reported to be at capacity early in the morning.

According to the Police Department, the Knicks’ ticker-tape parade, the first such procession in the team’s 80-year history, brought players up 17 blocks on Broadway, through Lower Manhattan to City Hall on a route known as the Canyon of Heroes, flanked by hordes of fans and 10,000 police officers.

At noon, the team  handed the keys to the city in a ceremony hosted by Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

The team’s victory has unleashed a citywide euphoria on a scale rarely seen before, the reflection of a city that waited years to witness a winning N.B.A. team and one starved for a positive cause to unite behind. 

Municipal buildings were illuminated in the Knicks’ signature blue and orange. Forest green trash cans along the parade route were traded in for the team’s colorway, too.  

Throughout the city, enterprising New Yorkers continued to hawk T-shirts, hats and other unofficial merchandise to anyone wishing to memorialize this moment in the life of the city and its beloved sports franchise.

“New Yorkers have cheered for our team from packed living rooms in the Bronx to watch parties in Brooklyn,” Mr. Mamdani said in a statement on Saturday, “from bars in Queens to Staten Island to Manhattan, and Madison Square Garden itself. Now it’s time for our city to celebrate together. Bing bong.”

Lower Manhattan was filled with thousands of fans dressed in the team's signature blue and orange.

Additionaly, Grammy-winning artist Alicia Keys performed her 2009 hit a rendition of "Empire State of Mind" at the downtown ceremony.