It seems that not even Rio’s sacred tradition of carnival can escape the clutches of the financial crisis this year. The city’s flagship annual event is a dazzling spectacle that suspends reality for two days from sundown to sunrise in a blur of thundering music and sublime choreography. This year, however, with recession looming in Brazil, austerity and financial scandal look like being something of a running theme.

The country’s most powerful broadcaster, TV Globo, had already pulled out of its regular transmission of the final Parade of Champions when it announced further cuts to its normal carnival schedule. Without the usually clamorous media partners on board, broadcasting the full two days of parading and the grand finale has been deemed financially unviable. As a result, Globo won’t be showing the first schools’ parades on the 15 and 16 February, one of whom is the 2003 and 2007 winner São Clemente.

With the state governor juggling Olympic preparations with the unedifying combination of a looming recession, severe water shortages and the knock-on effects of state oil company Petrobras’ corruption scandal, carnival has been forced down the list of priorities. While Petrobras has assured the top twelve samba schools that they will receive the same R$1 million (£250,000) funding as last year, the state has yet to confirm whether their own grants will indeed be paid out.

Elsewhere in Brazil, it isn’t simply a question of finances that looks like dampening the party. In the states of São Paulo and neighbouring Minas Gerais, the drought that has caused severe water shortages and power outages across forced local councils to cancel official carnival events in twenty cities. Several rounds of council meetings have resisted plans to cancel São Paulo’s official parade, one of the biggest in the country, but Brasilia didn’t escape the cutbacks - there will be no parade in Brazil’s capital city this year.

Financial woes are even casting a shadow over the famously democratic free-for-all that is Rio’s street carnival. In the last decade, the weeks of events either side of the main parade have become just as big a part of the celebrations. This year, however, several of the long-running blocos, the musical collectives the biggest of which can attract more than 100,000 people at a time, have been forced to cancel their events. Citing a lack of support from sponsors unwilling to do more than provide the basic infrastructure, the popular, 50,000-strong Bloco Cru is among those taking a year out, while others have been forced to downsize.