Toronto’s Portugal Day Parade is moving to St. Clair Avenue this year

Organizers for Toronto’s annual Portugal Day Parade say this year’s festivities will look a little different come June.

For the first time in nearly 40 years, participants will march along a new route that stretches across St. Clair Avenue West, and cuts through the city’s Corso-Italia neighbourhood.

The parade was traditionally held on Dundas Street West in Little Portugal. However, organizers with the Alliance of Portuguese Clubs and Associations of Ontario (ACAPO) told OMNI News that it wasn’t possible to continue the parade on Dundas this year, but no specific reason was given.

When pressed for more details, ACAPO President José Eustáquio told CityNews that his organization attempted to build a better relationship with the Little Portugal Business Improvement Association (BIA) in previous years by merging the Portugal Day Parade with the BIA’s Do West Fest — an arts and culture festival which spans 16 blocks of Dundas Street.

In 2023 and 2024, the two events ran simultaneously in the same neighbourhood during the same weekend. However, Eustáquio says that experience resulted in the parade being “drastically and negatively affected.”

Two of the biggest issues he pointed to were “mass overcrowding” of Dundas Street with vendors who he claims “were not even from the local area.” The Portugal Day Parade was also forced to move its start time two hours earlier from 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.

“At our annual general meeting last June … the ACAPO membership consisting of 39 affiliated organizations unanimously voted for an alternative solution to maintain our parade,” Eustáquio added.

He says the new route is an enormous change, but the alliance chose St. Clair Avenue because of its sizable Portuguese community, which continues to grow due to gentrification and shifting neighbourhood dynamics.

“It was also clear that both residential density and commercial vibrancy of the Portuguese-Canadian community had largely shifted north in the Davenport riding to the St. Clair Avenue West area, making that our focused area of transition,” Eustáquio said.

When asked about ACAPO’s decision to move the parade out of Little Portugal, a representative for the neighbourhood’s BIA told CityNews, “It’s true that hosting both the Portugal Day Parade and Do West Fest on the same day presented logistical challenges for everyone involved. Integrating a large-scale parade into a 16-block street closure that draws over 700,000 attendees required significant coordination and compromise.”

“While this created some operational difficulties, it also highlighted the importance of collaboration between longstanding cultural events and evolving city festivals,” the Little Portugal BIA added. “We remain committed to finding solutions that respect the integrity of both events and celebrate the diversity of our community.”

“As for the parade’s start time, adjusting it to 9:00 a.m. was a difficult but necessary decision to ensure the safety and flow of both the Portugal Day Parade and Do West Fest within a shared and limited footprint,” it said. “We recognize the importance of tradition and remain open to continued dialogue to improve coordination in future years.”

The Portugal Day Parade is scheduled to begin at Oakwood Avenue at 10:00 a.m. on Sat. June 7, 2025 and will end at Caledonia Road.

PORTUGAL WEEK 2025

Last month, Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow announced that the City would contribute more than $2.5 million in funding for 64 Toronto festivals. According to City records, ACAPO will receive $18,000 for Portugal Week 2025.

Eustáquio says this is only the second time the festival has been able to secure funding from the City and hopes the Ontario government will follow suit when the province’s budget is tabled on May 15.

“We’re hoping … that we can count on the province for some support,” Eustáquio said at a press conference.

The festival will return to Earlscourt Park after a seven-year hiatus and will take place during the first weekend of June. Organizers say the events will feature live music, folk dancing, food and drinks. The festival is planned to wrap up on June 9 with a concert by singer João Pedro Pais at the Axis Club on College Street.

The first Portugal Day celebrations in Toronto were held in 1966, when several thousand people gathered near Exhibition Place to celebrate Portuguese culture and commemorate the death of Luís de Camões, a famous poet and literary icon whose work has been compared to Shakespeare. 

As the community resettled in the Dundas West area throughout the 1970s-80s, Trinity-Bellwoods Park became the main site of the festival’s events. June is Portuguese Heritage Month and June 10 was officially declared Portugal Day in Canada back in 2017.