On Sunday the great carnival parade crosses the streets, a spectacle involving tens of thousands of visitors every year.

On Tuesday the Stoet van de Voil Jeanetten (Aalst dialect for "Parade of the Dirty Sissies") goes through the streets.

In this parade, men walk around in women's clothes and props such as a bird cage, a herring, fake breasts, corsets, a fur coat, a worn out umbrella and a stroller.

This tradition originates from the history of Aalst, when the lower class was too poor to buy or make a beautiful carnival costume.

In 2005, the Saudi ambassador to Belgium conveyed a protest from the Arab League at the hurtful depiction of Muslims in the carnival parade after one group had dressed as terrorists in burqas.

[11] Unia, the Belgian independent arbitrator for matters concerning discrimination, found that no laws had been broken given the specific context of carnivalesque parody and lack of malicious intent on behalf of the carnival group.

[12] Following the 2019 controversy, a statement was made through the office of the Aalst mayor, Peter Van den Bossche, saying “This doesn't encourage anti-Semitism…Two hundred percent it's not anti-Semitic," insisting the depiction had no mal-intent and was instead an event steeped in tradition and parody.

In anticipation of UNESCO's expected reaction,[15][16] the mayor of Aalst pre-emptively applied to have his city's carnival removed from the World Heritage list.

[17] This action of removing oneself voluntarily from the UNESCO World Heritage List had never been done before; thus, there was no customary process for Aalst to follow.