TriPride Parade and Festival

TriPride is a free, all-ages Pride parade and festival for Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia, held in downtown Bristol on the state line. It is organized by the nonprofit TriPrideTN and bills itself as the largest single-day festival in the Tri-Cities. The 2026 event is on October 10.

TriPrideTN formed in October 2017, when a group of Tri-Cities residents, drawing on local LGBTQ social networks, decided the region was ready for its own Pride. They modeled the organization closely on Knoxville Pride, wrote a charter and became a 501(c)(3) charity whose main tool is a free community parade and festival. Its stated purpose is a stronger, more inclusive community across Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia.

The first TriPride, in September 2018 at Founders Park in Johnson City, drew more than 10,000 people, and its parade had the largest contingent in Johnson City's history. In 2019 the event moved to downtown Kingsport, where about 10,000 attended, more than 1,100 people marched in 72 contingents and 110 exhibitors took part. In Bristol the festival has been held in two states at once, and local media reported an estimated 13,000 attendees there. Bristol Herald Courier readers ranked it second among the city's best festivals in 2023.

The sixth parade and festival carried the theme Roots, Rainbows, Resilience: A Patchwork of Pride. Tickets are free, and the organization works with local businesses and chambers of commerce to keep the event going each year.

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.

TriPride Parade and Festival has included parade, festival, vendors and food trucks.

The next edition is October 10, 2026. It usually falls october.