Gay new orleans events
Pride guide: Celebrate Gay New Orleanians with events around the city
Crowds will fill the streets of New Orleans next week to celebrate the city’s LGBTQ+ community with parades, festivals and other big events.
The NOLA Celebration Parade is set to roll through the French Quarter on Saturday, June 14. PrideFest will go back for its 10th year, and be held in the evening to assist people beat the heat. RuPaul’s Drag Race luminary Kerri Colby will headline the event.
The weekend-long Inky Pride celebration will showcase Black LGBTQ+ culture through various events held across the city.
Below is a guide to help you keep track of all the happenings. Expect rainbows, glitter, and plenty of food and drinks, melody and drag shows.
Did we miss an event? Email tips@wwno.org and let us know what’s happening nearby you.
Thursday, June 12
PrideFest Opening Night Reception
Location: New Orleans Healing Center, 2372 Saint Claude Avenue
Time: 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Enjoy ️an evening of cocktails, hors d'oeuvres, and entertainment and music. Tickets are $33.85 and can be purchased online.
New Orleans Black Pride: Welcome Mixxer
Location: Hilton Garden Inn, 1001 South P
LGBTQ Festivals & Events
New Orleans has it all – celebrated nightlife, fantastic restaurants, a dramatic arts scene, 24-hour-a daytime bars and the chance to dress up in outrageous costumes any second of year. Altogether, it’s the ideal setting for the liveliest of queer cultures. The LGBTQ community takes the spotlight at festivals all year prolonged, with Southern Decadence over Labor Time weekend attracting more than 125,000 revelers to what’s arrive to be recognizable as Gay Mardi Gras. Parades, costumes, drag shows and themed parties abound during Decadence, then again they’re a part of the city’s Pride Fest, Mardi Gras, Halloween festivities and even Easter, where the Gay Easter Celebration is one of three in the French Quarter. The Saints and Sinners Literary Festival takes a more studied approach, bringing the gay, lesbian, attracted to both genders, transgender and intersex literati together for three days of inspired musings. The preference in Modern Orleans is always to celebrate diversity; whatever your interest, there is a LGBTQ festival for it. Here is a list:
Kerri Colby is currently dazzling "RuPaul's Queenly Race" fans as a contestant on the newest All-Stars season, and in just a scant weeks she'll be down in the Big Easy to headline New Orleans Pridefest, an annual June event celebrating the LGBTQ+ community.
This is the 10th year for Pridefest, which will be held at darkness for the first time ever after organizers said guests suggested the hour change due to summer heat.
The festival, held outside Phoenix Bar at the corner of North Rampart Street and Elysian Fields Street, is Saturday, June 14 — the same day as the Pride parade — but the entertaining lasts all weekend. New Orleans Dark Pride is also hosting several pleasurable events the alike weekend.
Pridefest spokesperson David Jack Browning said the event, in the summer when tourism slows in New Orleans, has grown in size over the last decade.
"We're getting people from Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Pensacola," Browning said. "It has grown from just a very miniature sidewalk block party ... to what it is now. Several blocks closed for vendors, show and international kingly queens. It's taken on a experience of its control but in the best possible way."
Here's everything you call to know about
Welcome to Southern Decadence 2024
SDGMs XLVII Vanessa Carr Kennedy, Jeffrey Mayeaux and Paribe Meyer would fond of to thank the following businesses and individuals for being Official Sponsors of the 2022 Southern Decadence Parade:
Presenting: Skyy Vodka, NOLA Hotel Group, Blush
Platinum: Hookers Ball, Golden Lantern, Crown Royal, Ambush, Hard Rock Cafe New Orleans
Gold: NOLA Living Reality, X-Crossing, Chef Ron’s Gumbo Stop, Bourbon Pub & Parade, Jennifer Solms & Cory Seaton, Allways Lounge & Cabaret, The Obituary, Bourbon Identity festival, SIPPs, Gulf Coast LGBTQ+ Chamber of Commerce, Swiss Navy, Courtyard Marriot, Up & Adam, Oz New Orleans, Phoenix, GrandPre’s, Rawhide, Good Friends Bar, Gennifer Flowers Kelsto Club, PowerMark Properties
Silver: Corner Pocket, Judy Peck
Bronze: Coldwell Banker Smith Homes
Pearl: Phantasmagorically-Hip, Jorge Yero, Nina Quinn, Miss Gay Lagniappe America