Athens PrideFest and Parade

Athens PrideFest combines the city's Pride festival and parade into one free afternoon and evening in downtown Athens. It is organized by Athens Pride and Queer Collective and includes a resource fair, vendors, food trucks, a kids zone and entertainment, with the parade stepping off in the late afternoon.

Athens Pride traces its roots to 1998, when the local LGBTQ+ community held a potluck picnic under the pavilion at Lake Herrick. The picnic was first hosted by GLOBES, a University of Georgia group for LGBTQ faculty and staff founded by Annette Hatton, and it later became an independent, volunteer-run Athens PRIDE Committee. In 2011 the committee grew the picnic into a larger festival in Lay Park, and in 2013 it earned 501(c)(3) status.

In 2022 Athens Pride merged with Athens Queer Collective to form Athens Pride and Queer Collective. That same year it held the city's first Pride parade and helped bring rainbow crosswalks to downtown Athens. The group launched a Gender-Affirming Care Grant in 2023 and has given out more than $50,000 through it, and in 2025 it hired its first executive director, Elliot Williamson.

The organization is mostly volunteer-run and funded by donations. Along with the festival and parade, it runs an LGBTQ+ youth group, a QTBIPOC group, a trans support group and religious trauma support groups, holds a queer prom, and highlights queer-owned and affirming businesses around Athens.

Pride events celebrate LGBTQ+ people and mark the Stonewall uprising of June 1969. Most combine a parade or march with a festival of performers, community groups, vendors and food.

Athens PrideFest and Parade has included festival, parade, kids zone and resource fair.

The organizer has not announced dates for 2027 yet. In 2026 it was held June 6, 2026. It usually falls first Saturday of June.