Capital City Pride PrideFest

PrideFest is Iowa's largest LGBTQ+ celebration, held over a dozen blocks of Des Moines's East Village. The weekend includes a Pride Stride 5K, multiple music and drag stages, family, teen, and wellness zones, a worship service, and a Sunday parade on East Grand Avenue. Capital City Pride also runs programs year-round.

Capital City Pride traces its start to June 30, 1979, when a small group of Iowans marched from the Historic Blazing Saddle to the Iowa State Capitol, joining national Pride marches held on the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. The organization became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 1991. In 2018 a new group of board members set out to modernize it, which led to record attendance, new year-round programs and the hiring of its first full-time staff in 2023.

Today the group leads more than 60 programs a year, welcomes roughly 75,000 guests to PrideFest and its other events, and operates on a budget of more than one million dollars. Its work is organized around four pillars: community, wellness, education and family. Recent programs have included Pride Storytellers, an evening of personal stories, LGBTQ+ game nights with the Rook Room Game Lounge and Cafe, and a free National Coming Out Day picnic with the LGBTQ+ Nonprofit Roundtable.

The organization's stated vision is an Iowa where everyone belongs and can live openly without fear. Its supporters include local breweries, churches, law firms, clinics, banks and many individual donors and couples from around Central Iowa.

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.

Capital City Pride PrideFest has included parade, festival, 5k, youth events and interfaith service.

Capital City Pride PrideFest was first held in 1979.

The organizer has not announced dates for 2027 yet. In 2026 it was held June 12-14, 2026. It usually falls second weekend of June.