New Hope Celebrates PrideFest

New Hope Celebrates PrideFest is a week of events that ends with a Pride parade starting in Lambertville, New Jersey and marching across the bridge into New Hope, followed by a vendor fair. The organization has hosted Pride each May since 2003 and says it draws more than 15,000 people each year. It also runs Out in October events for LGBTQ+ History Month.

New Hope Celebrates, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, has hosted one of the earliest Prides of the season each May since 2003. The festival links two towns in two states across the New Hope and Lambertville Bridge over the Delaware River, and the week leading up to the parade includes parties, special events and educational activities. A Best Cocktail contest among local bars, open to those 21 and older, has also been part of the lineup.

The parade begins at 11 a.m. at Lambertville City Hall, where New Jersey's first same-sex marriages took place in 2013, and continues down Bridge Street into Pennsylvania. Organizers describe it as the only Pride parade that crosses a state line. More than 1,000 marchers take part, including local and national marching bands, floats and nonprofit groups, and the parade goes ahead rain or shine. Its centerpiece is a 100-foot, eight-color Rainbow Equality Flag. Spectators can watch anywhere along the route, and guest announcers call out participants at the Lambertville House and at Ferry and Main streets next to the Logan Inn.

After the parade, the Pride Fair runs from noon to 5 p.m. in the Legion parking lot at New Street and South Main Street, with vendors, live entertainment and cash bars. Admission proceeds support New Hope Celebrates and its PrideFest events.

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.

New Hope Celebrates PrideFest has included parade, fair, gala and pageant.

New Hope Celebrates PrideFest was first held in 2003. Organizers reported more than 15,000 annually people in null.

The organizer has not announced dates for 2027 yet. In 2026 it was held May 9-17, 2026. It usually falls mid-May, one of the first Prides of the season.