Arsenal players and staff will parade the Premier League trophy and the FIFA Women’s Champions Cup on Sunday 31 May from 2pm
Arsenal parade: Key details
The parade will begin at 2pm on Sunday, 31 May, and will celebrate Arsenal’s Premier League title, and the women’s FIFA Women’s Champions Cup success.
The event will feature four open-top buses and a champions truck with DJs leading the procession.
The first bus will carry the Premier League champions, the second will carry the men’s team staff, the third will carry the women’s team with the FIFA Women’s Champions Cup, and the fourth will be a community bus featuring Arsenal in the Community participants and Arsenal staff nominated for outstanding contribution.
The club expect a huge turnout and have urged supporters to plan ahead, spread out along the route and be considerate of children, families, disabled supporters, residents and local businesses. The buses will keep moving throughout the parade, so fans are being encouraged not to gather in one area.
Emirates Stadium, Drayton Park and surrounding roads will be closed and inaccessible to the public throughout the parade. Supporters have also been told not to congregate around Hornsey Road, Benwell Road or Drayton Park, as the teams will not be visible from those locations.
Islington and Hackney councils will put temporary parking suspensions and road closures in place across multiple streets, with closures expected from around 4am until around 8pm on Sunday, possibly later if required for safety.
All roads along the parade route, as well as side roads leading to it, will be affected. Signage for affected roads will be in place from 27 May, and residents and businesses have been advised to check it in advance.
Arsenal parade: Map
The parade route forms a large loop around Emirates Stadium and the surrounding Islington streets.
The route appears to start near Hornsey Road, then heads north-west towards Seven Sisters Road, before moving across the top of the map via Blackstock Road and Mountgrove Road. It then turns down the eastern side through Green Lanes and Petherton Road, continuing towards Newington Green Road and Essex Road.
From there, it runs south-west along Essex Road, then up through Upper Street, passing close to Angel and Highbury and Islington, before heading back towards Holloway Road and completing the loop around the Emirates area.
The map also marks a no pedestrian access zone in red and white around parts of Drayton Park and the approaches immediately beside Emirates Stadium, meaning supporters should not expect to view the parade from directly outside the ground.
Arsenal forced to alter parade plan due to high expected attendance
The Arsenal Supporters’ Trust report that Arsenal and the police are expecting a minimum of 500,000 people for Sunday’s trophy parade, with the Gunners set to celebrate their Premier League win on May 31st at 14:00 BST.
Whilst it’s obviously fantastic to have such high demand to celebrate Arsenal’s trophies, this means a huge number of people to police.
The AST report that there were an estimated 100,000 at the stadium last Tuesday when the club won the league thanks to Manchester City bottling it against Bournemouth, 50,000 at Aston Villa‘s recent parade, and 6,000 (six thousand) at Manchester City‘s.
So, 500,000 attendees would be an unprecedented number of people.
As a result, Arsenal have planned a 9km parade route lasting 1.5-2 hours to spread them all out, with no plan for a trophy lift at the end.
The club have had to make that concession because it wouldn’t be feasible to crowd in half a million people around the Armoury – as the club have done for previous cup successes with lower numbers.
On that note, the Armoury itself will be closed on the day.
Arsenal have also apologised to the fans who won’t be able to make it back from Budapest in time, pointing out that it wouldn’t be possible to hold such a large event on a working day.
Arsenal fans turn out early for parade
With hours still to go before the Arsenal parade was due to start, social media was filled with people showing how crowded the streets already were.
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