The balloons go up over Manhattan on Thanksgiving morning for the 100th time this year — and Ohio hands helped put a remarkable share of them there. The 100th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade steps off Thursday, November 26, and to mark the milestone, NewsForce247 is launching “Ohio at the Macy’s Parade,” a daily series that runs through Thanksgiving Eve and tells the parade’s century through the Ohio bands, singers, characters and craftsmen woven into it.
The math takes a moment, because the parade is older than its number. The first parade marched in 1924, but Macy’s itself explains why 2026 — not 2024 — is the 100th: the parade was canceled in 1942, 1943 and 1944, when materials that would have gone into the celebration, including rubber, were dedicated to the war effort. “Although it began in 1924, the Parade was canceled in 1942, 1943 and 1944 due to World War II,” Macy’s wrote in its parade release. “The 100th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade will occur in 2026.” One hundred three parade years, minus three lost to war, equals 100 parades held.
Ohioans can watch the centennial march live on Thanksgiving morning, Thursday, November 26, from 8:30 a.m. to noon Eastern on NBC and Peacock, starting at 8:30 a.m. in all time zones, with a Spanish-language simulcast on Telemundo. The route covers about two and a half miles, from 77th Street and Central Park West down to Macy’s Herald Square store at 34th Street.
Macy’s is building the 100th parade as a walk through its own history, according to CentralPark.com’s guide to the 2026 parade, which tracks Macy’s announcements. Underdog — a fixture of every parade from 1965 to 1984 — returns for the first time since 1984. Felix the Cat, the parade’s first character balloon (1927, in Macy’s telling), is back too, along with the Blue Hippopotamus, last seen after the 1931 parade. A Macy’s All-Stars float gathers Bullwinkle J. Moose, Olive Oyl, Popeye, Swee’Pea and Sonic the Hedgehog, and a Tony Sarg’s Amazing Marionettes float pays tribute to Tony Sarg, the artist who designed the parade’s original balloons — a name that matters to the Ohio chapters of this series, because it was Akron’s Goodyear that brought Sarg’s designs to life.
The new arrivals carry the centennial theme too. A new Hello Kitty balloon — the third in parade history and the first since 2017 — holds a red apple; a Bluey Christmas balloon makes its debut; GEICO brings its first-ever parade float; Mr. Peanut returns on a new PLANTERS float for the first time since 2016; and Purina Dog Chow joins with a Salute to Service Dogs float. Macy’s is promising a record 100 inflatable elements in the centennial march.
One honest note before the celebration starts: no Ohio band marches in the 100th parade itself. The ten bands in this year’s lineup, confirmed by Marching.com, come from Indiana, Tennessee, South Carolina, Hawaii, Texas, Connecticut, Alabama and Illinois, plus the NYPD Marching Band and Macy’s own Great American Marching Band, which auditions students nationwide. Ohio’s parade story is not about this year’s lineup. It is about the hundred years behind it — and, as the end of this article shows, about 2027.
Start with the balloons themselves. For more than five decades, the parade’s giant balloons were designed and built not in New York but in Akron, by the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. Ohio Magazine’s history of the connection dates Goodyear’s balloon building from 1927 into the early 1980s, and the Akron Beacon Journal counted 92 balloons Goodyear created for Macy’s. When the parade went dark during World War II, the Beacon Journal has reported, Goodyear scrapped its Macy’s balloons and recycled the rubber for the military. And the most famous balloon of them all was an Ohio double-header: Superman, created in Cleveland by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, flew over Broadway three times — in 1940, 1966 and 1980 — and every version was built in Akron. The 1980 Superman, at 104 feet the largest Goodyear ever made, was the last balloon the company built for the parade.
The bands tell the same story. Ohio University’s Marching 110 marched in 2000, led the entire parade in 2005, and returned in 2017. Miami University’s marching band closed the line of march — the last band in, clearing the way for Santa — in both 2003 and 2011. Ohio State’s Best Damn Band in the Land made exactly one trip, in 2018, the same morning Springfield’s John Legend sang from a float. Pickerington’s high school band marched four times, Centerville’s twice and Defiance’s three times. Cleveland’s American Greetings put Strawberry Shortcake and the Care Bears on floats, and Strongsville sent a marching band and a jump-rope team. Each of those stories gets its own chapter in this series in the days ahead.
And the story is not finished. On October 16, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported, William Mason High School’s marching band received its first-ever Macy’s invitation — a surprise announcement that came with a $10,000 donation from Macy’s — to march in the 101st parade on Thanksgiving Day 2027. Ohio sits out the 100th, but it is already booked for the 101st. The series closes on Thanksgiving Eve, Wednesday, November 25, with the flagship story of the run: “Akron Built the Balloons,” the full account of how Goodyear made the parade fly. Until then, it is one Ohio chapter a day — starting today, with the Best Damn Band’s one trip down Broadway.
Photo: Phil Roeder, CC BY 2.0 — a balloon floats over the crowd at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York.