Motor City Pride

Motor City Pride is a two-day LGBTQ+ festival held each June at Hart Plaza in downtown Detroit. The weekend includes multiple entertainment stages, vendors, and food, and a Pride Parade steps off on Sunday from Fort and Griswold. It is Michigan's largest Pride celebration and traces its roots to a 1972 march in downtown Detroit.

Motor City Pride dates to June 1972, when the first march was held in downtown Detroit to protest anti-gay laws and push for LGBT rights. After a few years a picnic was added after the march, and that picnic eventually grew into today's festival. From 1986 to 1988 the march ran down Woodward Avenue to a rally at Kennedy Square, with a party afterward at the McGregor Center at Wayne State University.

In 1989 the statewide march moved to Lansing to mark the 20th anniversary of Stonewall, leaving metro Detroit without an event. That year Frank Colasonti Jr. founded and chaired the first official Gay and Lesbian Pride Festival, sponsored by the Detroit Area Gay/Lesbian Council and held in a gym at the University of Michigan's Dearborn campus. It became PrideFest in 1990 and moved to Oakland Community College in Royal Oak. In 1992 chairman Michael C. Lary formed the independent South East Michigan Pride, and in 2001 the festival passed to the Triangle Foundation.

The event was renamed Motor City Pride in 2003 and moved to downtown Ferndale, and from 2009 to 2017 it was run by a planning committee of Triangle Foundation volunteers. Today it draws more than 65,000 people. The festival connects visitors with organizations, clubs and agencies working for LGBTQ equality, and nearly 100 parade assistants help run the parade.

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.

Motor City Pride has included parade and festival.

Motor City Pride was first held in 1972. Organizers reported over 65,000 participants people in 2026.

The next edition is June 12-13, 2027. It usually falls second weekend of June.