Notting Hill Carnival

Europe's biggest street carnival takes over West London for a weekend every August - steel bands, soca and dancehall trucks the size of houses, feathered and sequined mas bands, and a genuinely massive crowd that turns Notting Hill's quiet residential streets into an explosion of Caribbean culture and sound. It grew out of London's Caribbean community in the 1960s and has never lost that community-first heartbeat, even at a million-plus attendees.