Here's the new way Worcester will celebrate Pride this year (2025)

The Pride Worcester Festival, an annual event celebrating the Greater Worcester LGBTQ+ community, is marching forward this fall — figuratively and literally.

The festival will take place Sept. 6 from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m., kicking off with a march starting at the Femme Bar in the Canal District and ending downtown, where the festival’s main stage will be, according to David Conner, Pride Worcester’s director of development.

Pride Worcester is a collaborative effort between organizations and members of the Greater Worcester LGBTQ+ community. The group is responsible for organizing the Pride Worcester Festival each year.

This year will mark 50 years since the first Gay Pride Week in Worcester, which took place in June 1975, according to Pride Worcester’s website.

The idea behind holding a march is to use it as a build-up for a parade in the future, according to Conner. In prior years, a Pride parade was held in Worcester, with the last one being held in 2019.

In 2024, a procession was held from the Worcester Public Library to the main stage in downtown Worcester, according to Conner.

This year’s march will try to expand upon that procession, with the hope of it building back up to a parade in the future.

“We think a march will be a really good, sort of intermittent way of sort of getting us to the size and building back up to a parade,” Conner said.

The march will be free for anyone who wishes to participate, Conner said.

Planning underway

The festival is still in the planning stages, with entertainment and speakers currently being booked, Conner told MassLive Monday.

Last year, the festival featured performances from local drag artists and speeches from elected officials, including Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll, Conner said.

In the months before the festival, special events will be held on behalf of Pride Worcester.

“We have a political forum that we will be organizing in, most likely, July,” Conner said. “We will continue to work with political leaders who have genuine relationships with Pride.”

Another upcoming event is the Worcester Pride Pageant, which will take place Aug. 16, according to Conner.

The pageant is an event where members of the Greater Worcester LGBTQ+ community show off their talent and pride, Conner said. The top two winners of the pageant are crowned as the “first and second majesties” of Pride Worcester. The two “majesties” are also required to do community service projects for the LGBTQ+ community, according to Conner.

“For example, the winner was a 62-year-old drag queen who just started drag a couple of years during the pandemic,” Conner said about last year’s majesty. “It really shows the diversity of Worcester’s LGBTQ+ community, as well. And that is our intention.”

This year, Pride Worcester will provide participants with a $200 stipend to help them acquire the necessary materials they may need in order to take part in the pageant, according to Conner. Participants will also receive training from Chelsea Page Moses, a Massachusetts resident who was crowned Miss Trans USA Global in 2024, according to Moses’s webpage.

What makes the Pride Worcester Festival different?

What makes the Pride Worcester Festival unique compared to other Pride events is it’s held in September rather than June, which is classified as Pride Month.

The festival is held every September, in part, to provide a Pride event for Worcester’s student population returning to school for the year, Conner previously told MassLive.

This year’s pride festival also comes during the same year Worcester was designated as a sanctuary city for transgender and gender-fluid people.

“What’s happening right now politically, what we are trying to do is send the message that Pride is always going to protect trans people,” Conner said. “That’s the core of what Pride is.”

The Pride Worcester Festival will take place from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Sept. 6. Find more information at www.prideworcester.org.