Limoux runs what it claims is the longest carnival on earth, and the claim is at least arithmetically defensible: bands of masked fécos come out every weekend from January until Lent, three times a day, in a town of 10,000 people. The performance is unusually formal. Each band circles the arcaded Place de la République at a deliberate pace, accompanied by its own musicians, stopping at the cafés. The masks are blank and white, the gestures slow, the whole thing closer to a rite than a party.
The tradition is documented from the early seventeenth century and was originally tied to the millers' guild paying its dues. It ends with the Nuit de la Blanquette, when the fécos burn an effigy of His Majesty Carnival by torchlight and the town drinks the local sparkling wine, which predates Champagne by a century if you ask anyone in Limoux.
No attendance figure is published, and the format resists one: the audience is a slow weekly trickle across two months, not a single crowd.
Plan it as a weekend rather than a date, and check the Easter calendar first — the final weekend moves with Lent.
PlanningEaster-linked and exceptionally long: it starts in January but ends whenever Lent begins.