Twin Cities Pride Festival and Parade

Twin Cities Pride is a free two-day festival in Loring Park in Minneapolis, billed by its organizers as Minnesota's largest free Pride event. The festival features entertainment on three stages and more than 600 vendors, including LGBTQIA2S+ and BIPOC community resources, artists and businesses. The Pride parade runs down Hennepin Avenue from 3rd Street to Spruce on the Sunday of festival weekend.

Twin Cities Pride is a Minnesota 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose mission is to empower every LGBTQIA2S+ person to live as their true self. Its parade began 55 years ago as a grassroots march down Nicollet Avenue and has grown into one of the largest Pride parades in the country, with more than 200,000 people lining the streets. Organizers frame gathering in joy and visibility as an act of resistance at a time when LGBTQIA2S+ rights are under attack.

The festival is Minnesota's second-largest festival of any kind. Stickers on booth numbers identify vendors that are BIPOC, BIPOC LGBTQIA2S+ or LGBTQIA2S+ owned or operated, so attendees know whom they are supporting. Info booths staffed by volunteers carry festival and accessibility maps, and each has an ADA stop where people with limited mobility can wait for a shuttle to other parts of the park. Families with children or vulnerable adults can get reunification bands, food vendors have flagged which allergies and diets they can accommodate, and the Autism Society of Minnesota hosts the Escape Space, a shaded, air-conditioned sensory break area by the lake.

Merchandise sales and donations fund year-round programs, including an Artist-in-Residence program, youth game nights, youth camp and sports scholarships, and the Rainbow Wardrobe, which provides gender-affirming clothing for free. The festival and parade rely on hundreds of volunteers 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.

Twin Cities Pride Festival and Parade has included festival, parade, youth events, 5k and family events.

Twin Cities Pride Festival and Parade was first held in 1972.

The next edition is June 26-27, 2027. It usually falls last full weekend of June.