Pride parade
A pride parade (also known as pride event, pride festival, pride march, or pride protest) is an event celebrating lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) social and self-acceptance, achievements, legal rights, and pride. The events sometimes also serve as demonstrations for legal rights such as same-sex marriage. Most occur annually throughout the Western world, while some take place every June to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City, which was a pivotal moment in modern LGBT social movements.[1][2][3] The parades seek to create community and honor the history of the movement.[1][4] In 1970, pride and protest marches were held in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City and San Francisco around the first anniversary of Stonewall.[5] The events became annual and grew internationally.[6][7][8] In 2019, New York and the world celebrated the largest international Pride celebration in history: Stonewall 50 - WorldPride NYC 2019, produced by Heritage of Pride commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, with five million attending in Manhattan alone.[9]
Pride parade
Active
Festival and parade
Annually, often late June
Urban locations worldwide, incl. cities in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, India and Japan
54
June 27, 1970 in Chicago.
June 28, 1970 in Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco.
Although estimating crowd size is an imprecise science, as of June 2019, New York City's NYC Pride March is North America's biggest Pride parade. They had 2.1 million people in 2015, which rose to 2.5 million in 2016.[265] In 2018, attendance was estimated around two million.[266] For Stonewall 50 – WorldPride NYC 2019 up to five million took part over the final weekend,[267][268] with an estimated four million in attendance at the parade.[269][270]
São Paulo, Brazil's event, Parada do Orgulho GLBT de São Paulo, is South America's largest, and is listed by Guinness World Records as the world's largest Pride parade starting in 2006 with 2.5 million people.[271] It broke the Guinness record in 2009 with four million attendees.[272] It kept the title from 2006 to at least 2016.[273] It had five million attendees in 2017.[265][274] As of June 2019, it has three to five million each year.[275] In 2019, it had three million.[276]
In 2020, due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, most Pride parades and events were either cancelled or held online.[277] One of the exceptions was Taiwan Pride, held on October 31 with the country having contained the virus outside its borders thus becoming the largest Pride event in the world.[278][279]
As of June 2019, Spain's Madrid Pride, Orgullo Gay de Madrid (MADO), is Europe's biggest; it had 3.5 million attendees when it hosted WorldPride in 2017.[274]
As of June 2019, the largest LGBTQ events include: