Collar City Pride Festival

The Collar City Pride Festival brings a Pride celebration to downtown Troy at Riverfront Park, with local musicians, burlesque, drag shows and a pop-up vendor market. It also offers a family fun area, a low-sensory space, food vendors and community resources. 2026 is the third annual festival.

Collar City Pride is an organization led by LGBTQIA2+ people whose work centers on community, care and training around substance use. Alongside the yearly Pride festival in Troy, it offers affirming, peer-based harm reduction services, advocacy and education, and community events across Rensselaer County.

Its long-term goal is to open Rensselaer County's first inpatient substance use treatment center designed for transgender, gender non-conforming and non-binary people, paired with transitional housing and staffed by providers who reflect the people they serve. The organization points to gender-segregated treatment programs in New York as a barrier to care and cites a 2021 statewide LGBTQI+ needs assessment that named substance use as a critical concern.

Collar City Pride is run by volunteers and holds community feedback groups where residents can meet the team and describe the needs they see in the local LGBTQ+ community. A newsletter shares festival, volunteer and event news.

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.

Collar City Pride Festival has included festival, drag, market and family events.

The next edition is October 10, 2026. It usually falls autumn (October in 2026).