New York’s most joyful Halloween tradition got a double dose of star power on Saturday, October 17, when Chrissy Teigen and John Legend led hundreds of costumed canines through the East Village for the 36th annual Halloween Dog Parade at Tompkins Square Park. The couple — founders of the pet brand Kismet — served as the day’s headline guests, and the dogs, as always, served as the day’s headline everything else.
The parade, a fixture of the East Village calendar since 1990, drew hundreds of dogs in outfits ranging from the adorable to the architecturally ambitious, plus the thousands of humans required to photograph them. For Teigen and Legend, it was a hometown crowd for a company built on a family memory: Kismet was inspired by Puddy, their late English bulldog — “our first dog together in 2008,” Teigen has said, and her self-described “soul dog.”
A Parade With a Purpose (and a Pet Brand)
Legend explained the company’s philosophy in terms that fit the park perfectly. The brand, he said, is “built around that kind of love and building community” — and a dog parade is nothing if not love and community at maximum volume. Kismet’s presence gave the event a sponsor with a genuine origin story: Puddy, the bulldog who arrived early in the couple’s relationship, lived a decade as a beloved family celebrity, and whose memory now anchors a company.
(istolethetv / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0))The couple did not arrive as distant executives. They arrived as participants, in costume themselves — Legend as Daejon Love, the man accused of posing as a San Francisco 49ers player and defrauding women, and Teigen as his phony coach. It was the kind of deep-cut, news-cycle humor the couple is known for, and it set the tone: at this parade, the humans are allowed to be ridiculous too.
The Costumes Everyone Will Be Talking About
The dog costume contest is the parade’s beating heart, and 2026 delivered a field for the ages. Dogs were spotted dressed as a chewing-gum machine and as a New York City trash can — the latter being, in this city, a genuine local hero. The couple had publicly hoped for a flood of one specific costume: Molly, the mechanical singing bird at the center of Kelly Clarkson’s viral feud with a Brooklyn shop, with Teigen and Legend joking they expected 40 to 50 Mollys in the crowd.
(Rogue Artists / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0))When the judging ended, the Best Canine Costume crown went to a dog named Snickers — a winner’s name if ever there was one. The judging panel included Dr. Kwame Stewart, Kismet’s chief veterinary officer, better known to television audiences as the “Street Vet” for his work providing free care to the pets of people experiencing homelessness. His presence underlined the day’s double nature: a costume party with a real welfare mission stitched inside it.
How the Day Played Out
By midday the park had settled into its happiest possible configuration: a slow-moving river of dogs, owners orbiting with phones held high, and spectators pressed three deep along the route doing the day’s real work — pointing, gasping and demanding to know each costume’s theme. Volunteers kept the procession moving, water stations did brisk business, and the costume contest’s later rounds played to a crowd that had long since stopped pretending to be neutral. Children voted loudly for every dog. The dogs, professional as ever, voted only for snacks.
Teigen and Legend worked the event the way experienced hosts do, appearing where the energy needed them — greeting contestants, posing with families, and lending the contest stage a little extra wattage when Snickers was crowned. Their brand’s team was woven through the day without swallowing it, an arrangement regulars noted approvingly: the celebrities behaved like guests at somebody else’s beloved party, which, after 36 years, is exactly what the parade is.
Thirty-Six Years of Very Good Dogs
The Tompkins Square parade began as a modest fundraiser for the park’s dog run and has grown into one of the most photographed Halloween events in America, covered internationally and imitated in cities around the world. What has never changed is its scale of joy: it is a neighborhood event that happens to produce world-class pictures, a block party where the blocks are full of dogs wearing tiny hats.
(istolethetv / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0))The growth has brought growing pains the organizers handle with practiced calm: bigger crowds, tighter logistics, and the eternal negotiation between a free neighborhood party and an event the whole internet wants to attend. This year’s edition threaded the needle, they said, by keeping the contest, the judging and the route exactly as local as ever, while letting the famous guests amplify rather than reorganize the day. The result felt less like a takeover than a coronation the neighborhood had voted for.
Teigen and Legend’s involvement is the latest chapter in that growth — and a logical one. Few celebrity couples have made their dogs as central to their public story, from Puddy’s long reign to the family menagerie fans follow today. On Saturday, with hundreds of costumed canines streaming past and Snickers wearing the crown, the East Village’s favorite tradition looked exactly as it should at 36: a little chaotic, completely heartfelt, and impossible to attend without grinning.
For anyone planning to challenge Snickers next year, the bar is now clear: originality, craftsmanship, a sense of humor about the headlines — and, if this year’s hosts have their way, at least forty dogs dressed as a mechanical bird. The 37th parade is already less than a year away, and if this edition proved anything, it is that New York’s dog people treat October the way Milan treats fashion week. The planning, somewhere in a hundred East Village apartments, has already begun — and next year’s dogs, mercifully, have no idea what is coming for them.