More than 100 people have been arrested while attending Notting Hill Carnival, the Metropolitan Police has said.
The force said of the 140 arrests around the annual west London festival, 15 had been on suspicion of assaulting officers, one of whom needed hospital treatment for injuries to their hand.
Hundreds of thousands peacefully attended the Children’s Day Parade on Sunday, marking the most colourful day of the carnival, which celebrates Caribbean culture. An estimated two million people attend across Sunday and Monday.
Dancers in bright costumes filled the streets as music filled the air, while rows of stalls offered fragrant jerk chicken, curry goat and rum punch cocktails.
For the majority of carnival-goers Europe’s largest street party will have been a joyful family-friendly experience.
Of the arrests made, police said 105 were made at the event itself while 35 were made nearby.
There were 52 arrests for drug-related offences, 21 for suspected possession of an offensive weapon, four for sexual offences, and two for robbery.
The Met said 13 of the arrests were made after the suspect was identified using live facial recognition technology which had not been used at the festival since 2017 after first being used in 2016.
The force said on Friday it had arrested 100 people ahead of the start of the carnival, which resulted in 21 people being recalled to prison.
It also seized 11 guns and more than 40 knives.
About 7,000 officers are being deployed across the capital over the bank holiday weekend to police the carnival.
Music was stopped at 15:00 on Sunday for a 72-second silence to commemorate the 72 lives lost in the Grenfell Tower fire, as well as people who have died at the carnival in recent years and Kelso Cochrane, whose murder in 1959 became the catalyst for the event.
Update 25 August:
This article has been amended to correct statements regarding Live Facial Recognition (LFR) technology. The article previously stated that 2025 was the first year LFR was used at Notting Hill Carnival. This has been corrected to state that it was used in 2016 and 2017.
A reference to the use of LFR drones has also been removed.