The smell of freshly boiled crawfish will permeate all of downtown when The 33rd Annual Mudbug Madness Festival - Presented by Centerpoint Energy - opens Thursday, May 26.

This is one of those festivals, like the Red River Revel and Holiday In Dixie, that defines how Shreveporters party over a weekend!

How did it all begin? According to the festival's website:

In 1984, a group of brave and loyal North Louisianans decided to take a stand. This group was tired of hearing: “You people in Shreveport are more like Texans than anything else. You’re hardly a part of Louisiana, at all.” So this daring group gathered in the Downtown Shreveport Unlimited office to organize their ranks and pay homage to the most cherished of Louisiana institutions – the crawfish boil! And this group wanted to make their crawfish boil the granddaddy of them all.

So Mudbug Madness was born. What began in 1984 as a two-day street festival in downtown Shreveport is now one of Louisiana’s largest and most popular Cajun festivals, featuring renown Cajun, Zydeco, Blues and Jazz artists, mouth-watering Cajun cuisine, raucous contests, and fun for all ages. Now a four-day festival held each Memorial Day weekend, Mudbug Madness is nationally recognized as one of the Southeast Tourism Society’s Top 20 Events, drawing as many as 56,000 people in one day.

What can you expect from this year's festival? Great live entertainment, music, dancing, crawfish eating contests, and mudbugs cooked up in just about every way possible.

Festival is open from 11AM-11PM daily.

Mudbug Madness salutes our military. Show your Military ID and get in FREE at all times (active duty & retired) – courtesy of Shreveport Regional Airport

Ticket Prices:

Thursday & Friday:
– FREE Til 5
– After 5: $5 per person
Saturday & Sunday:
– $5 per person all day
– FREE for Children under 7

And don't forget to bring some extra dollars for all of those delicious crawdads! If you do forget...there's an ATM ON SITE!!!

For more info, visit mudbugmadness.com.

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