A guide to LGBTQ Pride in 2020
After 2019’s big focus on the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, 2020 is obviously a very different bucket of fish.
In the US, June is officially Pride Month, but Pride celebrations are normally happening throughout the year in different parts of the world.
The enormous disruption being caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in the cancellation of pretty much everything.
What we don’t know is how long the disruption will last for, and when it might be possible for events to take place in whatever new-normal we’re left with.
So, where does that leave us with Pride? How can we wave our rainbow flags when parties and parades aren’t possible?
Anthems Pride
Throughout the month of June – Pride Month – new podcast series Anthems Pride will be celebrating the diverse voices of the LGBTQ community.
The series will feature Ben Hunte, Raven Smith, Grace Savage, Amrou Al-Kadhi, Isabel Adomakoh Young, and Freddy McConnell.
“We need community now, more than ever – words that bind us, not divide us…” explains Hana Walker-Brown – executive producer of Anthems Pride. “I saw how much of an impact Anthems Women and Anthems Home had on people, how much comfort and courage listeners were finding in the words of others and really wanted to bring that to Pride, especially as Pride celebration events have been cancelled. We have an exceptional selection of voices from exclusively LGBTQI+ communities contributing to this series, their words are raw, honest, inspiring, moving, motivating- there truly is something for everyone and it’s a real privilege to be able to bring them to our listeners and celebrate the words and experiences of some truly brilliant people. It was really important it was for us to represent all of these communities and I hope it inspires others to be proud of who they are.”
Is everything cancelled?
At this stage, most LGBTQ Pride events that had been planned for 2020 are either cancelled or under review.
Here’s a regional guide to some of the major events.
Canada
- Originally scheduled for 28 June, organisers have confirmed that the 2020 Pride March won’t be happening due to social distancing restrictions.
- Instead of a physical event, this year the celebration of Pride in Toronto is going digital. A month-long online Pride festival is being held throughout June.
United States
- This was scheduled for 5 April but has now been postponed. New dates for this event have not yet been confirmed.
- This was scheduled for 16 May but has now been postponed. New dates for this event have not yet been confirmed.
- This was scheduled for 12-14 June, but on 13 March organisers confirmed that they have postponed the event. New dates have not yet been announced.
- Originally scheduled for 3-7 June, organisers have advised that the event has been postponed. They are hopeful of having a Pride event later in the year, but new dates have not yet been announced.
- Originally scheduled for 27 June, organisers have confirmed that are postponing the event. They remain hopeful that they will be able to have some form of celebration later in the year, but new dates have not yet been announced.
- Originally scheduled for 28 June, organisers have confirmed that the 2020 event has now been cancelled.
- Originally scheduled to run from 27-28 June, organisers have now confirmed that the 2020 event has been cancelled.
- Originally scheduled for 28 June, organisers have confirmed that the Pride parade will not be able to proceed on that date. Alternative ways of celebrating Pride later in the year are being explored, but it’s most likely that we’ll have to wait until 2021 before Pride returns to Chicago in full force.
- Originally scheduled for 18 July, organisers have announced that the 2020 event has been cancelled.
South America
- This was scheduled for 14 June but has now been postponed to 22 November.
UK
- Pride in London was meant to be happening on 27 June but organisers have confirmed that they have decided to cancel the event.
- The focus has now shifted to planning for 2021.
- Originally scheduled for 28 June, organisers have confirmed that the event has been postponed. A revised date has not yet been set.
- Originally scheduled for 25 July, organisers have announced that the event will be postponed to later in the year, but new dates have not yet been announced.
- As at 27 March, organisers have confirmed that the event has been postponed, but they are still exploring whether it will be possible to find new dates for a 2020 event.
- Newcastle was designated as UK Pride for 2020, and was originally scheduled for 17-19 July.
- Organisers have now confirmed that the 2020 event won’t be going ahead, with everything held over until next year. Dates for 2021 have been announced as being 23-25 July 2021.
- On 3 April, organisers confirmed that the event has been postponed. It looks like it has been postponed until sometime in 2021.
- Originally scheduled for 11 July, organisers have announced that the 2020 event has been postponed until September. New dates have not yet been confirmed.
- Originally scheduled for 8 August, organisers have confirmed that the event has been cancelled.
- This was originally scheduled for 8 August, but on 3 April the organisers announced that they had decided to cancel the 2020 event.
- Originally scheduled for the end of August, organisers have confirmed that the 2020 event won’t be going ahead as planned.
- Effectively, 2020’s Pride celebrations have been cancelled, and organisers are looking ahead to August 2021 when they’re expecting normal service to resume.
- Originally scheduled for 23 May, on 23 March the organisers confirmed that they had rescheduled the 2020 event to 5-6 September.
Europe
- Originally scheduled for 23-24 May, organisers have confirmed that the event has been postponed to August, with indicative dates being 21-31 August.
- Originally scheduled for 27 June, organisers have confirmed that the 2020 event has been cancelled.
- Normally held in early June, the 2020 event has had to be postponed. Organisers are hopeful that they will be able to organise something at the end of June, but we may have to wait until 2021.
- Originally scheduled for 6 June, organisers have confirmed that they have had to cancel.
- Dates for 2021 have been announced – they’re aiming to be back bigger and better on 12 June 2021.
- Originally scheduled for 12 June, organisers have confirmed that they have postponed the event. They’re going to have digital events to celebrate LGBTQ Pride in June, and they’re looking at new dates for later this year.
- Originally scheduled for 27 June, organisers have confirmed that the event will be postponed. They have indicated that they are looking at holding an LGBTQ Pride event later in the year, but new dates have not yet been set.
- Thessaloniki was selected as the 2020 hosts of EuroPride, with the event originally scheduled to take place on 27 June. Organisers have now confirmed that they’ve postponed due to Covid-19, but new dates have not yet been announced.
- Originally scheduled for 4 July, organisers have confirmed that they are shifting the event online. We’re hoping that we’ll be back in the streets of Madrid to wave our rainbow flags in 2021.
- Originally scheduled for 5 July, organisers have postponed everything until October. The new date for CSD in Cologne is 11 October.
- Originally scheduled for 25 July, organisers have confirmed that things will have to be different in 2020. They’re having a digital celebration on 25 July, looking at a physical event sometime later in the year, and planning for 2021.
- This is a spectacular Pride event because of the parade of boats on the city’s canal. The 2020 event was scheduled for 1 August, but organisers have confirmed that the 2020 event has been cancelled.
- Dates for 2021 have been confirmed. The 2021 boat parade will be on 7 August.
- Originally scheduled for 18-23 August, the 2020 event had to be cancelled. Dates for 2021 have been confirmed – the Pride festival will run from 12-22 August. It’s going to be a big one in 2021 – Copenhagen will be hosting World Pride as well as the Eurogames.
- Not scheduled to be held until 5 September, there is some chance that this event will be able to ahead as planned. Organisers are probably waiting to see what happens over the next few weeks before making any decision.
- Originally scheduled for 7-17 May, the 2020 event has been postponed until October. New dates for this event in 2020 are 2-11 October.
Asia
- Originally scheduled for 25 April, organisers have announced that this has been cancelled. We’ll have to wait until 2021 to celebrate LGBTQ Pride in Tokyo.
- One of the biggest LGBTQ Pride celebrations in the world, we’re hoping that Taipei Pride will be able to go ahead this year – it’s scheduled for 31 October. Organisers have said that they’re monitoring the situation closely, but as things currently stand they haven’t made the move to cancel.
Africa
- The 2020 event was successfully held in February. We’re expecting LGBTQ Pride to return to Cape Town in February of 2021.
Australia
- Sydney’s Mardi Gras celebrations were successfully held in early 2020.
- Dates for 2021 have been confirmed – the parade and party are scheduled for 6 March.
- Melbourne’s Midsumma festival was successfully held in early 2020. Dates for 2021 haven’t yet been announced, but it’s expected to take place in late January.
- Brisbane normally embraces September as an entire month of Pride, but there doesn’t seem to be any information available so far as to what their plans might look like for 2020. Australia’s at a different stage of the pandemic to most other countries, so it’s possible that there won’t be any Pride in Brisbane this year.
What is Global Pride?
- With most of the Pride events being cancelled, Pride organisations have got together to create a virtual Global Pride that everyone around the world can be part of. Global Pride will take place on 27 June.
Why is June recognised as Pride Month?
Across the United States – and in many other parts of the world – the month of June is officially recognised as a time to celebrate LGBTQ Pride.
The month of June is significant because the Stonewall riots took place at the end of June in 1969.
Brenda Howard is credited with being one of the main driving forces in coordinating the first LGBTQ Pride march. Howard is also credited with the idea for a week-long series of events around Pride Day. Additionally, Howard – along with fellow activists Robert Martin and Craig Schoonmaker – is credited with popularising the word Pride to describe these events.
Throughout the month of June, towns and cities across the US and around the world will be holding LGBTQ Pride celebrations.
Why were the Stonewall riots a big deal?
The Stonewall riots of 28 June 1969 weren’t the first protests or confrontations between police and the LGBTQ community, but they’ve become symbolic of the growing consciousness and confidence that paved the way for the fight for equality and freedom from discrimination.
What triggered the Stonewall riots was a police raid on the Stonewall Inn. In the heart of Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, the Stonewall Inn was a mafia-run bar that was a hub for the neighbourhood’s marginalised queer community.
In the late 60s, police raids on bars like the Stonewall Inn were commonplace – part of the continuing harassment and victimisation that LGBTQ people were experiencing at that time. The raid on the Stonewall Inn on 28 June 1969 sparked that sense of frustration into violent protests – protests that lasted six days and involved thousands of people. Perhaps most importantly, the riots received widespread media coverage.
Prior to the Stonewall riots, the push for LGBTQ equality was led by ‘homophile’ advocates – organisations such as the Mattachine Society. The Mattachine Society sought to organise and speak for gay men, and they favoured assimilation. Their objective was to demonstrate that gay men were ‘normal’ and just like everybody else.
Following the Stonewall riots, and in line with the counter-culture movements of the late-60s, representatives of the LGBTQ community became increasingly emboldened and more confrontational. New organisations were established, community-focused newspapers were published, and there was more of a willingness to be open, to be visible, to be different.
It was on the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots, 28 June 1970, that the first Gay Pride marches were held . The LGBTQ communities of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago held events to commemorate the raid on the Stonewall Inn and the violent confrontation that followed. The following year, Gay Pride marches were also held in Boston, Dallas, Milwaukee, London, Paris, West Berlin, and Stockholm . In subsequent years, the number of cities participating continued to grow.
Today, Pride events and celebrations are a big moment. They’re an important and symbolic opportunity for our community to come together, to celebrate our diversity and our visibility as well as our strength and resilience.
If you’re growing up in today’s world, starting to navigate your sexuality, starting to understand how you connect with the LGBTQ community that you see around you, it’s important to understand how LGBTQ identity has evolved over time, and the role that events such as the Stonewall riots have played in that.
History is important because it helps us learn from those that have gone before us – the battles that have been fought, the struggles that have been won, the mistakes that have been made.
You might not feel that you’ve got much connection with the people who lived in New York City in 1969, but it’s because of those people – because of their lifetimes of harassment and discrimination that culminated in six nights of violence – that we can proudly identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, queer, or however you want to define yourself within the broad LGBTQ umbrella. It’s because of those people that we can live openly as ourselves, that we can get married if we want, that we can have families if we want, that we have the freedom to lead the lives that we want. It’s because of those people that we continue to hold Pride marches around the world.
We honour the marginalised people of Greenwich Village – people who had nothing left to lose, people who were pushed so far that they had no alternative but to stand up to harassment and stand up to discrimination .
When is World Pride?
In 2019, World Pride was held in New York City to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Stonewall.
World Pride is an international Pride celebration that happens every two years. A different city hosts World Pride each time.
Since it began in 2000, World Pride has been held in the following cities:
- 2000: Rome
- 2006: Jerusalem
- 2012: London
- 2014: Toronto
- 2017: Madrid
- 2019: New York City
Future World Pride events are scheduled for Copenhagen in 2021, and Sydney in 2023.
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