Carnival Trivia
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157 free Carnival trivia questions with answers — pop culture quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
73 free Carnival trivia questions with answers. Carnival is the world's biggest party season, and this quiz travels the whole map of it. The questions cover Rio's samba schools and the Sambadrome, the masks and bans of Venice, Trinidad's J'ouvert and steelpan, Notting Hill's sound systems, Cologne's Kölle Alaaf and Nubbel burning, Mardi Gras in New Orleans and Mobile, king cake, the orange-throwing Gilles of Binche and the Battle of Ivrea, Basel's 72-hour Fasnacht, Bonhomme's Quebec winter carnival, Barranquilla, Oruro, Nice, Tenerife and Goa, plus Shrove Tuesday pancakes and the traveling midway born at the 1893 Chicago fair. Easy questions ask which city hosts the largest carnival and what hides inside a king cake; the hard ones want the year Venice's mask-makers got their guild, the first samba school and who brought the first sound system to Notting Hill. It suits a pre-Lent party, a travel-themed pub quiz round or a classroom unit on world festivals. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the individual carnivals, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 157 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The word 'carnival' is usually traced to an old Italian phrase meaning what?
Remove meat
Remove meat is the sense of the old Italian carnelevare: Lent's fasting rules banned meat, so the days before Ash Wednesday were the last chance to eat it up.
Q 02Which 'Brazilian Bombshell' starred in the 1936 musical Alô Alô Carnaval before taking her fruit hats to Hollywood?
Carmen Miranda
Carmen Miranda's fruit hats grew out of the 'baiana' look she first wore in a 1939 Brazilian film, modelled on the dress of poor Afro-Brazilian women in Bahia.
Q 03Mardi Gras, the name of carnival's last day, is French for what?
Fat Tuesday
Fat Tuesday was the last chance to eat rich, fatty food before the Lenten fast; French butchers marked the season by parading a fattened ox, the Boeuf Gras, through the streets.
Q 04Which Disney princess's story comes to a head at a New Orleans Mardi Gras parade?
Tiana
Tiana's friend Charlotte counts as a princess only until midnight, because her father has been crowned king of Mardi Gras for the day, a deadline that drives the film's finale.
Q 05Which Belgian town's carnival is famous for its Gilles, performers in wax masks and wooden clogs?
Binche
Binche's Gilles, hundreds of local men, go through a ceremonial dressing rite, then dance through the town to drums on Shrove Tuesday until fireworks close the day in the Grand Place.
Q 06What is the frenetic UNESCO-listed carnival music-and-dance style of Recife and Olinda called?
Frevo
Frevo's acrobatic steps come from capoeira fighters; when police cracked down on them, they are said to have swapped their knives for umbrellas and passed off their moves as dance.
Q 07Which South American country's Diablada carnival became a UNESCO Masterpiece of Intangible Heritage in 2001?
Bolivia
Bolivia's Carnival of Oruro began as an Andean festival that the Spanish banned in the 17th century; it carried on disguised as a Christian rite, with the Diablada devil dance at its centre.
Q 08The word 'Lent', the fast that carnival leads up to, comes from an Old English word for which season?
Spring
Spring: Old English 'lencten' meant springtime, literally the 'lengthening' of the days, and Dutch still calls the season 'lente'; in English the word narrowed to the fast that falls then.
Q 09Whose army ended the Venetian Republic in 1797, after which the city's carnival was outlawed?
Napoleon
Napoleon's Italian campaign ended the 1,100-year-old republic in May 1797; the carnival was then outlawed, masks and all, and came back only in 1979.
Q 10Legend traces Venice's carnival to 1162, when crowds danced to celebrate what?
A military victory
A military victory over the Patriarch of Aquileia is the legendary start; he was freed for a yearly tribute of a bull and twelve pigs, which Venetians slaughtered in public at carnival for centuries.
Q 11How did Venetian noblewomen keep the strapless moretta mask on?
A bitten button
A bitten button held the oval moretta on: gripped between the teeth, it left its wearer unable to speak, and the mask was also known as the servetta muta, the mute servant.
Q 12The long-beaked mask that is among Venice's most recognisable carnival disguises copies the protective outfit of which profession?
Plague doctors
Plague doctors' beaks, first described in the 17th century, were packed with aromatic herbs or perfume, on the belief that the scent would keep out the 'bad air' blamed for the disease.
Q 13Confetti takes its name from the Italian word for which treats, once thrown at carnival parades?
Sugared almonds
Q 21Rio's Sambadrome, the parade stadium for the samba schools, was designed by which architect?
Oscar Niemeyer
Oscar Niemeyer drew the Sambadrome for governor Leonel Brizola, who wanted a permanent home for the parades; it opened in 1984, and Niemeyer, by then over 100, attended its reopening after a 2012 renovation.
Q 22At the 2016 Olympics, Rio's Sambadrome hosted the marathon finish and which other sport?
Archery
Archery shot along the parade runway after a rebuild for the Games: the old brewery beside it was imploded in 2011 so that new stands could go up, finally giving the avenue the symmetry its architect had planned.
Q 23Which 1959 film, set during Rio's carnival, won both the Palme d'Or and the Oscar for best foreign-language film?
Sugared almonds are confetti in Italian; such confections, often sugar-coated seeds, were flung at carnival parades, and when bits of paper took over, English kept the old name, while Italians call the paper kind coriandoli.
Q 14Cologne's 'fifth season' is declared open on 11 November at precisely what time?
11 minutes past 11
11 minutes past 11 on 11 November opens the season in the Rhineland's carnival cities, but the fun is then shelved through Advent and Christmas and only picks up again in the New Year.
Q 15What greeting is traditionally shouted throughout Cologne's carnival?
Kölle Alaaf!
Kölle Alaaf is given three times at carnival shows, the second and third calls swapping 'Kölle' for the performer and the hosting society; Düsseldorf's cry is 'Helau', and Aachen has its own 'Oche Alaaf'.
Q 16In Cologne's ruling trio, the Dreigestirn, who traditionally portrays the Jungfrau (maiden)?
A man dressed as a woman
A man dressed as a woman always plays the Jungfrau, bar one forced break: under Nazi rule the party ordered that a real woman take the role, and men took it back after the war.
Q 17Cologne's carnival ends by burning the Nubbel, a straw figure blamed for what?
Revellers' sins
Revellers' sins are pinned on the Nubbel, the straw man that hangs over the pubs all carnival; in a mock trial the crowd shouts that he is to blame, and he burns before Ash Wednesday dawns.
Q 18At Cologne's Rose Monday parade, the crowd shouts 'Kamelle!' to beg for what from the floats?
Sweets
Sweets fly from the floats by the hundreds of tons, along with soft toys and other small gifts; walking escorts beside each float keep children from darting under the wheels after them.
Q 19In the entrudo, the rowdy forerunner of Rio's carnival, revellers threw what at passers-by?
Water
Water, by the bucketful or sealed inside scented wax 'lemons'; the authorities spent years trying to ban the rough game in the 19th century, until masked balls and parades took its place.
Q 20Which samba school took its record 22nd Rio championship in 2017, ending a 33-year drought?
Portela
Portela's 22nd title was its first since 1984; weeks later a scoring appeal made Mocidade joint champion, so the 2017 crown ended up shared.
Black Orpheus
Black Orpheus moves the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to a Rio favela at carnival time; its songs by Jobim and Luiz Bonfá, among them 'Manhã de Carnaval', became bossa nova classics.
Q 24At Salvador's carnival, what is a trio elétrico?
Truck carrying a live band
A truck carrying a live band: it began in 1950 with Dodô and Osmar playing amplified music from an old Ford, and a third musician who joined them the next year gave the 'trio' its name.
Q 25Which pop star shot a 1996 video with Salvador's carnival drum group Olodum?
Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson filmed 'They Don't Care About Us' with Olodum's drummers in Salvador's old town, and also in a Rio favela where politicians worried about the city's image had tried in vain to keep him out.
Q 26J'ouvert, the paint-and-mud street party that opens Trinidad's carnival, takes its name from French words meaning what?
Break of day
Break of day, from 'jour ouvert': it starts in the dark before Carnival Monday dawns, with revellers smeared in mud, oil and paint.
Q 27Trinidad's carnival dates back to the 1780s and an influx of immigrants from where?
French West Indies
French West Indies planters brought masked balls to Trinidad from 1783; Africans on the island, shut out of them, are said to have staged small masquerades of their own, mocking their masters' parties.
Q 28Which torch-lit festival, recalling the fighting of plantation fires, fed into Trinidad's carnival?
Canboulay
Canboulay was the target of an 1881 police crackdown in Port of Spain that turned into riots when revellers fought back; the confrontation is re-enacted there each Carnival Friday.
Q 29Which traditional Trinidad carnival character is a stilt dancer of African origin?
Moko jumbie
The Moko jumbie, a towering stilt walker of West African origin, was believed to protect villages by seeing evil coming from far away.
Q 30From the 1940s, Trinidad's steelpans were hammered out of which discarded objects?
Oil drums
Oil drums, some left behind by US forces in the Second World War, became the raw material for tuned pans; before that, the island's metal bands had beaten biscuit tins, dustbin lids and frying pans.