Best Cities to Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day

Niche compiled a list of the Top 10 Cities to Celebrate St. Patricks’ Day based on an Access to Bars grade, St. Patrick’s Day Facebook Hype, % Irish, and the year the St. Patrick’s Day Parade was established. View the full ranking criteria below.

Pittsburgh has one of the highest percentage of its population identifying as Irish, great access to bars, a thriving St. Patrick’s Day Parade that boasts over 20,000 participants, and a staggering amount of St. Patrick’s Day hype on Facebook.

Boston boasts the largest percentage of its population identifying as Irish on our list. In addition to the Irish pride, the South Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade is known as one of the largest in the country.

Davenport and the “Quad Cities” region of Illinois and Iowa host the Grand Parade – the only bi-state St. Patrick’s Day Parade in the U.S followed by a Post Parade Bash filled with Irish revelry.

Every year, Buffalo residents ring in the dawn of Spring with not one but two full St. Patrick’s Day parades and city-wide celebrations.

Philly’s Erin Express, held on two consecutive weekends surrounding St. Paddy’s Day, may be the best annual bar crawl in America and has been offering free transportation to 20+ Philly bars for over 30 years. Philly loves the holiday so much that many also celebrate a “St. Practice Day” the weekend before.

Every year hundreds of thousands of people descend on Savannah for one of the largest St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in the world. Add in 70 degree weather and you have recipe for St. Paddy’s Day success.

St. Patrick’s Day is the biggest event of the year in KC, but don’t miss “Snake Saturday” or the BBQ Championship, both held in North KC the Saturday before the 17th.

Cleveland’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade, the oldest and largest in Ohio, always occurs on March 17, no matter the day of the week. A staggering 500,000 people made it out to celebrate the occasion in 2012 and it doesn’t appear the momentum is slowing.

The Ancient Order of Hibernians St. Patrick’s Day Parade is billed as one of the best in the country and kicks off a day of celebration in Dog Town, the city’s Irish neighborhood.

Chicago is famous for the St. Patrick’s Day tradition of dyeing the Chicago River green. Thousands of people line the waterway to witness the event after the downtown parade.

To qualify for the list, the city needed (1) a population of at least 100,000 residents, (2) a St. Patrick’s Day Parade that was at least 25 years old, and (3) a positive “Facebook Hype”. Of note, several large cities like New York City and San Francisco were disqualified from the list due to lack of interest in St. Patrick’s day on Facebook as a percentage of the population. Data comes from Niche, The American Community Survey, and Facebook.