The largest number of visitors to date was recorded in 2007, with 1.5 million people coming to watch the Schützenfest.
While the Schützenfests of the Middle Ages were primarily military in character, cultivation of traditions and social aspects are the main focus of the modern day festivities.
For this reason, the marksmen wear uniforms with mock guns, often decorated with flowers sticking out of the barrel.
This association is headed by a committee of 10–12 members, among them the Colonel (Oberst), the highest-ranking officer and the commandant of the regiment.
Ceremonially the Schützenfest is represented by the King of Marksmen (Schützenkönig), who is determined each year in a traditional shooting competition.
Application for the regality is open to all marksmen, however, it involves a lot of expenditure of time and money from both the king and his wife and for his children, optionally.
The regiment, brigade sized with more than 7,860 serving actively as of 2017, is divided into a total of 10 corps that have been established over time.
Apart from the Squires, the Scheibenschützen, the Artillery Battery and the Cavalry, all corps are further divided into platoons (Züge) of 15–30 marksmen each.
The Sappers form the smallest of the existing corps, consisting of a single platoon with a current total of 22 members.
The officers wear a blue uniform jacket and a bicorne instead of the tailcoat and top hat and a saber instead of the rifle.
The Squire Corps offers a chance for young boys past the age of 7, to take part in the Schützenfest.
Presumably the origins of the squires reach back to former times, when young girls in white dresses would accompany the royal carriage and throw flower petals.
At the royal parade the squires form an honor guard for the king, the committee and VIPs in the saluting base.
During the processions and the inspection for the royal parade, they march ahead of the king's carriage and the mounted escort behind.
To the left of each platoon, one marksmen (called a Hönes) carries a giant drinking horn adorned with flowers.
The history of the Scheibenschützen goes back to the St. Sebastianus Brotherhood, which organized shooting competitions as early as 1415.
To demonstrate their deference to the king all of the Scheibenschützen take off their hats in unison as they march past him and the court.
The travelling funfair, which is a part of the festival, is already opened on the Friday afternoon at 17:00, with the traditional tapping of the first keg.
The official opening of the Schützenfest at 12:00 on Saturday is marked by a gun salute, the hoisting of the flags outside the city's buildings and the tolling of the bells of the Saint-Quirinus Church.
Those marksmen applying for the regality take turns shooting at a log of wood (symbolizing a bird), mounted on a pole.
When a new king has been found the "Great Tattoo" takes place in the pavilion on the festival grounds following the event.
The marching bands enter the pavilion accompanied by the Sapper Corps, playing the Yorckscher Marsch by Ludwig van Beethoven.
Although it is no official event of the Neuss' Citizens' Marksmen's Association it is traditionally attended by the committee, the new king and a number of platoons of the Schützenlust, the largest contingent of the regiment.
The Tambourcorps „Deutschmeister Köln“ 1951 Roggendorf/Thenhoven and the Vereinigte Jägerkapelle Straberg 1926 both enter the square playing the Yorckscher Marsch (1813) by Ludwig van Beethoven.
As serenades ring out a together played army march, like the Mussinan march of Carl Carl, the Alexandermarsch of Andreas Leonhardt or the König Ludwig II.-Marsch of Georg Seifert as well as Des großen Kurfürsten Reitermarsch of Cuno Graf of Moltke which is played by the Vereinigte Jägerkapelle Straberg 1926 only.
Following the end of French occupation under Napoléon Bonaparte the Neuss Bachelor's Sodality asked permission to organize a shooting competition as well as a festive procession as an addition to the already existing fun fair.
In the course of the following decades the rituals and organizational structures that are still in use today gradually took shape: in 1833 a committee was elected, which was entrusted with organizing the Schützenfest, in 1840 the royal parade was added to the events.
The royal shooting competition had not been held in 1939, so that the reigning "monarch" Robert Lonnes was only officially relieved, when the Schützenfest was revived in 1948.
On three sides of the city hall's tower, traffic lights are permanently mounted especially for the orientation of the marksmen during the processions.
At the beginning of the processions, the lights are turned from red to green so that marksmen on trooping grounds further off into the city know when to start marching.