Philly Pride 2026 is getting a brand new arts festival and a new route

Big news for everyone gearing up to celebrate Philly Pride this year. The parade route will move to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, organizers announced on Tuesday. A separate announcement said there will also be a brand new Pride event — the first-ever Philly Pride Arts Festival.

The city’s Pride March will move from the Gayborhood to the Parkway, for the first time, on June 7. The parade route will now end with the Philadelphia Pride Festival at Eakins Oval; a change that symbolizes Pride “not only as a celebration, but as a powerful civic expression of visibility, advocacy, and community presence in the birthplace of the nation,” read a statement from Philly Pride 365, which produces the annual march and year-round activities for local LGBTQ+ communities.

“In a moment where the country is reflecting on democracy, it is critical that LGBTQIA+ people are not just included in that story, but are visible within it. Hosting Pride on the Parkway places our community at the heart of that narrative,” Tyrell Brown, founder and executive director of Philly Pride 365, said in a statement.

“This is not about leaving the Gayborhood. It is about expanding Pride across the city while continuing to invest in the spaces that have long been home to our community.”

While the specific route is still being finalized, it will start in the Gayborhood and continue to City Hall before going up the Parkway.

Also new this year is an arts festival that will kick off in June with a specific focus on LGBTQ+ creatives and communities. Philly Pride Arts Festival, a collaboration between six arts organizations, will feature a monthlong series of cabaret and drag shows, concerts, outdoor performances, and community events running June 6-27.

The festival will also participate in the Philly Pride Parade.

Nine events announced this week range from a free opera performance at Dilworth Park (June 18), to musical theater karaoke led by alt-jazz band Mobbluz (June 13), and to a combined opera and drag show at Gayborhood mainstay Frankie Bradley’s (June 25).

Bringing together various disciplines, the coalition behind the festival is the chamber music group Altissimo Arts, drama student-focused Cross Keys Theatre Collective, outdoor concert aficionados East Passyunk Opera Project, grassroots opera group Liberty City Arts, the classical music singers of Prismatic Arts Ensemble, and the Asian American arts organization Wear Yellow Proudly.

The festival — also called Philly PrideAF — opens on June 6 with East Passyunk Opera Project’s Fear & Self-Loathing in Philadelphia, a cabaret show focusing on how queer people face and overcome erasure, violence, and trauma to find catharsis, with drag queen Balena Canto, Curtis Institute alum Ashley Marie Robillard, singers Lauren Cook and Jonathan Pierce Rhodes, and DJ Omar Saleem.

The Opera Project is also working with Wear Yellow Proudly for a special edition of their “Love Notes” event series, called Memoirs of a Gaysian. The lineup spotlights arias and classical music works from queer Asian composers and librettists Spencer Britten, Chuanyuan Liu, and Jeremy Chan.

Another highlight of the festival is Prismatic Arts Ensemble’s Shakesqueer: A Pride Cabaret, a Shakespearean themed show led by drag queen Canto and burlesque dancer Violet Caballero at the Black Squirrel in Fishtown on June 26.

“This festival is a reflection of what makes Philadelphia so special. We’re fortunate to be part of a community where differences are not only welcomed, but celebrated,” said Wear Yellow Proudly founders Alice Chung and Helen Zhibing Huang in a joint statement. “Philly is home to an incredible wealth of artists and small arts organizations that place deep value on community, and it felt like the right moment for all of us to come together.”