Newark Pride Week and Festival

Newark Pride is a week of events that ends with the annual Pride Parade and Festival downtown. The week includes an opening reception, a Sakia Gunn Day of Service and a wellness day. The festival is produced entirely by volunteers with Greater Newark's LGBTQIA+ organizations, local businesses and donors; 2026 was the 21st annual festival.

Newark Pride, Inc. says its mission is to raise awareness of the LGBTQ+ community through education, social justice advocacy, progressive public policy and opportunities for empowerment through fellowship. Along with Pride Week, it hosts community fellowship events through the year.

The 2026 Pride Week ran July 13 to 19. The Sakia Gunn Day of Service fell on July 14, and the week also included a night of ballroom. The 21st annual parade and festival closed the week on July 19, with performers on the Rodney Gilbert Mainstage.

The organization's history includes an invitation to President Barack Obama's first LGBTQ Pride Month reception at the White House, and a partnership between the Newark Pride Alliance and the Hetrick-Martin Institute that launched HMI To Go, an after-school LGBTQ program that fulfilled one of the promises made after Sakia Gunn's death. Its history timeline also notes the creation of the Newark LGBTQ Community Center and the launch of Rutgers University's Queer Newark Oral History Project. In 2022 the group exceeded a $50,000 fundraising goal, and its VogueTheVote campaign has been endorsed by Mayor Ras J. Baraka.

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.

Newark Pride Week and Festival has included parade, festival, day of service and wellness events.

The organizer has not announced dates for 2027 yet. In 2026 it was held July 13-19, 2026. It usually falls mid-July, with the parade and festival on the final Sunday.