Rock Hill Pride Festival

The Rock Hill Pride Festival is a weeklong Pride celebration in downtown Rock Hill with events throughout the community. It is organized with the downtown shop CD Mercantile, which recruits volunteers to keep the festival a safe space.

The Rock Hill Pride Festival is a grassroots event supported, funded and run by downtown businesses and individuals, with CD Mercantile, known as The Mercantile, at its center. Businesses can sponsor individual events or join a Business Ally list that marks them as safe, welcoming spaces, and festival volunteers help keep the week safe.

Events have included an annual Pride art exhibition by a local artist at Blue Goose Art Supply that stays up through June, a drag brunch at The Kounter, one-act plays about everyday queer life from Main Street Theater upstairs at The Mercantile, and a wig-snatching flag football game that collects donations for PFLAG Rock Hill.

The March for Equality starts and ends at The Mercantile and goes on rain or shine. The same evening, a Pride and Prose open mic gives the stage to LGBTQIA+ writers and performers while a family music bingo runs outside for younger kids. The week also features an 18-and-over Pride bingo, a 1920s-themed evening with drag performers at The Gathering Space and a Steampunk Masqueerade Ball, a prom for LGBTQ+ and allied high school students.

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.

Rock Hill Pride Festival has included festival week.

The organizer has not announced dates for 2027 yet. In 2026 it was held June 14-20, 2026. It usually falls mid-June, one week.