Twin Cities Pride Festival
THANK YOU FOR MAKING OUR 2024 Twin Cities Pride Festival A HUGE SUCCESS!
SAVE THE DATE FOR 2025 – JUNE 28-29, 2025!
The Twin Cities Pride Festival is Minnesota’s second largest festival and the largest FREE Pride festival. Highlighting the best in LGBTQIA+ entertainment on 4 stages, featuring over 650 vendors, including LGBTQIA+ & BIPOC community resources, artists, and businesses.
Vendors: We have over 600 unique vendors to explore. This year at Pride, we created stickers to identify vendors who are BIPOC, BIPOC LGBTQ, or LGBTQ owned or operated, so attendees can be informed about who they are making purchases from and getting information from, celebrating and supporting our diverse community. Keep an eye out for these identifiers on booth numbers throughout the park.
Info Booths: We have info booths located throughout the park to assist you with answering any questions you have. Info booths have copies of our map and accessibility map.
Reunification Bands: Bringing a kid or vulnerable adult to Pride? Stop by any of our info booths to get fill out a reunification band. Write your name & number on the wristband. You can also write any illnesses, allergies, or other important information on the ID wristband.
Getting to the Twin Cities Pride Festival or Parade can be a struggle with so many of our friends trying to do the same. Consider using public transportation, ride-sharing services, biking, or walking if you live nearby. Planning ahead will help you avoid the hassle of parking and ensure a smoother, more enjoyable experience. Let’s make this Pride celebration as fun and stress-free as possible!
Lime Scooters
Find Lime Scooters around Loring Park and use the discount code in the app to get around!
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Metro Transit
Public Transportation is the best way to get to the festival! You can get free ride passes for the festival via Metro Transit using the buttons below.
Food
We have 4 food courts with 46 food vendors located throughout the park that sell everything from cheese curd tacos to seafood!
Beer Gardens
We have 2 beer gardens located by our Loring Stage and Stonewall Stage that sell beer and seltzers. You must purchase a wristband for $5 and be 21 to enter.
Cannabis Garden Rules:
No Smoking Allowed
Products must be consumed within the gated area.
Products, like gummies, may be purchased and taken home for consumption, but must remain sealed in public.
Join us for a groundbreaking experience at this year’s Pride festival with our first-ever cannabis garden!
This exclusive lounge area will feature a variety of THC beverages, edibles, and tinctures for you to enjoy. We’re proud to prioritize BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ owned businesses in this space, creating a truly inclusive and diverse environment. Don’t miss out on this unique opportunity to celebrate Pride in a new, elevated way!
At this year’s Twin Cities Pride Festival, we are excited to introduce Artist Alley, a dedicated space exclusively featuring LGBTQIA+ artists.
In the heart of artist alley, we will host an art activation that invites festival attendees to create their own art to leave in the space and take a piece of art that someone else created that resonates with them. This initiative aims to foster a sense of community among artists while encouraging everyone to unleash their inner artist.
Join us in celebrating and supporting our local LGBTQIA+ artists, become a part of this dynamic and inclusive artistic experience, and take home a piece of unique art from the festival!
Our Youth Hideaway area has been expanded! This area is dedicated to LGBTQIA+ youth and will include the Rainbow Stage which will feature performances and programming exclusively for youth.
LEAVE POSITIVITY | TAKE POSITIVITY
This activity allows you to leave a positive message for someone else to find and discover a positive message on a sticker that you can take with you. It’s a fun and meaningful way to spread positivity, connect with others, and carry a piece of the festival’s uplifting spirit with you!
Sponsored by My Pit Bull is Family
SATURDAY
All Day – Flealess Market
All Day – Pet First Aid (provided by Access Pet Care)
11am – Doggie Drag Show (registration starts at 10am)
1pm – Pet Paw Paintings
3pm – Trick Dog Contest (registration starts at 2pm)
5pm – Story Time
SUNDAY
All Day – Flealess Market
All Day – Pet First Aid (provided by Access Pet Care)
11am – Tiny Heinies Puppy Party (featuring adoptable pups from No Dogs Left Behind)
11am – Story Time
2pm – Trick Dog Contest (registration starts at 1pm)
4pm – Doggie Drag Show (registration starts at 3pm)
Our first Queer Writes Book Fair was such a success we are bring it to the festival!
Find the Queer Writes Book Fair tent in the Pink zone at the festival to find local LGBTQIA+ authors and bookish vendors along with readings and spoken poetry!
PICKLEBALL
Just Pickles Pride Pickleball Tournament presented by LIFETIME!
Saturday, June 29th at Loring Park for a day full of fun and competition.
Social Division: 10 AM – 1 PM
Competitive Division: 1 PM – 4 PM
Yoga
YogaSix is leading a free, accessible, outdoor yoga floor in Loring Park on Sunday at 9am!
Bring your own mat!
Jean-Nickolaus Tretter’s legacy is beautifully preserved in the History Pavilion at Twin Cities Pride, a testament to his lifelong dedication to LGBTQ history. Tretter’s journey began in 1972 when he participated in his first Pride event, walking down Nicollet Mall with a handful of others to promote gay and lesbian pride. This initial step laid the groundwork for his future contributions.
The History Pavilion, located at the Loring Park Community Arts Center, offers a rich display of LGBTQ experiences, historic events, photos, and artifacts from the vast Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies. This collection, now housed at the University of Minnesota Andersen Library, began in the 1970s with Tretter’s personal interest in preserving LGBTQ stories in pop culture. Over the years, it has grown to include tens of thousands of books, periodicals, films, videos, and other significant items.
Tretter’s commitment to making LGBTQ history accessible led to the creation of the History Pavilion, one of the first of its kind at any U.S. Pride festival. Initially, it featured modest displays under a canopy tent, but it has since evolved into a comprehensive, mobile exhibit that can travel to various community events worldwide.
The History Pavilion not only showcases Tretter’s collection but also highlights pivotal moments in Minnesota’s LGBTQ history, including the first openly gay student body president, the first legally married gay couple, and groundbreaking transgender-inclusive legislation. Each year, the Pavilion updates its panels to reflect new milestones and ongoing struggles, ensuring that the history and stories of the LGBTQ community remain vibrant and relevant.
As Tretter once remarked, the Pavilion serves as a powerful reminder of the continuous fight for equality, inspiring both new generations and those who have long been part of the journey.
New exhibit alert! We Always Find Each Other: Histories of LGBTQ Community Building in Minnesota will debut June 29–30th, 2024 at @twincitiespride
Co-curated by Dr. Aiden M. Bettine, @olivia11ann and @polyesterforever this exhibit showcases the many avenues through which LGBTQ people have built community in the state of Minnesota. Shared community is critical to our history both locally and nationally, it is where we find each other and find ourselves. Where our hobbies, passions, careers, and political interests meet our identities as LGBTQ people, we create spaces, organizations, events, resources, clubs, groups, businesses, and movements together.
We Always Find Each Other centers different methods and spaces where we find and build community, evidencing the act of gathering as a timeless activity in queer and trans history. Before the Gay Liberation Movement our gathering and connection were often done discreetly and in secret. A majority of the history on display is from the 1970s forward, demonstrating how our community has flourished in the social and cultural shifts of the twentieth century to be more easily seen, gathered, and heard.
Pulled from throughout the Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies at the University of Minnesota Libraries, these histories emerge from the archival materials our community has entrusted us to preserve so we can facilitate intergenerational knowledge sharing.
The exhibit will be on view Saturday, June 29th from 10am–7pm and Sunday, June 30th from 10am–6pm in the History Pavilion in Loring Park.
Rainbow Wardrobe is a part of Twin Cities Pride’s year-round programming division, Rainbow Circle. Our wardrobe is made up of new and gently used items donated by community members. Access to free gender affirming resources is LIFE CHANGING for some individuals.
There are two Rainbow Wardrobe locations at the festival:
Youth – Located in the Youth Hideaway
Adult – Located in Family Services in the light blue section
Photo credit: Brooke Ross Photography
