A week before the big invasion, Tampa’s smallest buccaneers take Bayshore. Children’s Gasparilla (Saturday, January 23, 2027) is the alcohol-free, family-first opening of pirate season: a bicycle safety rodeo, pirate-themed stage shows, the Gasparilla Air Show-style flyovers of years past, and the main event — the Children’s Gasparilla Parade at sunset, with kids in full costume marching as the stars.
The afternoon’s Preschooler’s Stroll lets the littlest pirates parade their decorated wagons and trikes, and the evening closes with “Piratechnic” fireworks over the bay — Tampa’s cutest boom.
Costumes are mandatory in spirit; beads fly gentler here, and strollers outnumber swords a hundred to one.
Every Tampa pirate starts somewhere. It starts here, in a wagon, wearing an eyepatch.
