From Pride Month to Queer Year, your quintessential LGBTQ+ community event guide for 2025
Art by Tom Epplin
Whether you’re seeking Family picnic vibes or an all-night prance-a-thon, summer love or a cuddle puddle, a drag bonanza or a rainbow-bedizened parade, St. Louis and its surrounding area has something queer brewing for all members of the LGBTQ+ community this Pride season. Out in STL was delighted to chat with community leaders at the helm of local organizations working tirelessly to assemble resourcing and community spaces in 2025. While this year has brought many new challenges to queer organizers (see: corporate Pride distancing, antagonistic legislative and executive actions, and RuPaul’s divisive new bracket formatting), the STL community is showing up and holding space in observation of the queer year.
1. 33rd Annual Pagan Picnic – May 31-June 1 – Tower Grove Park
St. Louis Pagan Picnic
While not a “capital-P” Pride event, the Pagan Picnic has been a warm and welcoming space for members of the alphabet mafia for more than three decades now. Bring your coven or form a new one and enjoy the bards, wards, and oracle cards on-stage and throughout the thoughtfully curated artisans’ booths at the heart of this family-friendly event. paganpicnic.org
2. City Nights: Pride Drag Show – June 13 – City Museum
Pride Drag Show at City Museum
Founded in 1997 by sculptor and artistic director Robert James Cassilly Jr, the City Museum has been an arts-scene and makerspace staple in St. Louis for almost three decades. This year the concrete wonderland is paying homage to Pride with an evening of queer art and cocktails. ‘Bubble Unit’, an art show curated by Cranky Yellow, will feature works by area LGBTQ+ artists, alongside the high-octane, Gaga-centric drag extravaganza “Enter Mayhem” featuring performers Becca Diamond, Aiden Control, Noah Mazzaratie Steele, and more. Tickets available through City Museum’s website. citymuseum.org
3. Krewe of Vices and Virtues’ Soulard Pride – June 14 – Soulard: Russell Blvd
For a community-powered and family-friendly Pride celebration, check out this year’s Soulard Pride, organized by the Krewe of Vices and Virtues. Soulard’s fifth annual Pride festival is kicked off by a much-participated and highly anticipated golf cart parade departing from Big Daddy’s and culminating at Great Grizzly Bear. Street performances by a legendary line-up including Jade Sinclair, Mars, Moxi Contin, the Dickerson Krewe, and the Belles of the Bevo will be blessing the streets outside Bastille throughout the day. Local artist and food vendor booths, a Kids’ Corner, and a foam party with the backdrop of beautiful historic Soulard make this fete unforgettable.
“We’re always working throughout the year on creating a community environment, whether it be Pride, the Easter Bunny Comes to Soulard, Santa Comes to Soulard, or Trunk-or-Treat,” convey Krewe Pride chairs Levi Cullifer and Seela Jacobs. “We’re extremely fortunate that we’re supported by our partner local businesses and nonprofits. We’re doing better than anticipated this year, and we’re very fortunate that our community has rallied around us to help with this endeavor.” kreweofvicesandvitrues.com
4. The Little Bevo’s Pride Market – June 14 – Bevo: Morgan Ford
Rainbow socks looking a little shabby? Sprucing up your gay altar with some Haim veladora? Check out The Little Bevo’s Pride Market, a free bazaar for fancy people. Sip on a cocktail and socialize as you peruse the wares and flair of STL’s queer and queer-adjacent makers. Plus: windmill! thelittlebevo.com
5. Pride St. Charles’ 2025 Pride Festival – June 14 – St. Charles Family Arena
Strength in the face of adversity has always been a hallmark of our community. In the wake of the recent presidential executive orders targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in the public and private sectors, we’ve gotten a stark glimpse into where support for the LGBTQ+ community is enshrined…and where it isn’t. Harrowingly, for Pride St. Charles this came in the form of funding withdrawal by one of their most significant sponsors, Procter & Gamble. “We have an online #SavePride campaign. This online campaign has raised over $4,000 from the community,” reports Pride St. Charles President Beth Finder. “We are so grateful for everyone who has donated and started their own online fundraiser on our behalf. Saving Pride takes a village and we are so happy to have our community behind us.”
Despite the setback, Pride St. Charles’ “These Are My Colors” 2025 Pride Festival remains slated to proceed on June 14 in the St. Charles Family Arena. The county’s preeminent Pride celebration will sport live performances, local vendors, community resources, and endless entertainment with a message of validation and support: who you are matters and how you identify deserves respect.
6. Ozarks Pridefest’s 2025 Homecoming – June 14 – Springfield, MO’s GLO Center
Looking to get out of town and make some new friends? Ozarks Pridefest and Springfield, MO’s GLO Center are throwing you the Homecoming you never had on June 14 (with a ticketed Homecoming dance on the 13th ). A downtown parade (participation encouraged, by foot, bike, or float!) will kick off the academic exercises, followed by Dance and Drama (drag performances by RuPaul alums Lucky Starzzz and Jaymes Mansfield), Music (by headliner Paige Alyssa), Civics (MO queer political activists), Theater (performance pieces by Mosaic Arts Collective), and a PE-themed dance party. A+ for theming, but see me after class anyways… ozarkspridefest.com
7. Pride St. Louis’ Pride Fest 45 – June 28-29 – Downtown STL
Editor’s note: After publication, Pride St. Louis announced that it plans to charge $10 for a two-day pass for the festival. The parade will still be free.
AB InBev can’t catch a break, huh? Partnering with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney in 2023 led to a sweeping boycott of Anheuser-Busch products by socially conservative factions of the political right. Meanwhile the astonishing news of Anheuser-Busch’s last-minute jilting of Pride St. Louis in March led many of St. Louis’s queer and allied bars to disavow themselves of AB products in favor of less fickle, better-principled suppliers.
While the loss of their weightiest donor has put serious strain on volunteer-driven Pride St. Louis and its weekend-long annual downtown festival, many in St. Louis have shown up by way of grassroots donations to their “45 for 45” campaign. St. Louis Pride Fest is one of the Midwest’s most established, visible, and far-reaching queer support events, bringing roughly a half-million people to our city every year. For anyone looking to help secure Pride St. Louis for the community-building work they do throughout the year, check out their campaign website. pridefest.org
8. Black Pride’s 30th Black Pride Weekend – August 14-17 – Berkeley’s Renaissance
With an eye for funding year-round and high-propagation programming, Black Pride STL executive director Randy Rafter and his team have thrown their effort behind producing a spectacular four-day 30th anniversary event for 2025. ”Our weekend celebration is largely to empower the programming that we host throughout the year, aimed at providing equity to those within the black LGBT community; it’s about uplifting and empowering our community as a whole,” Rafter conveys. “We’re focused on putting togethering programming for our young people so they understand that, one, they are part of a supportive community, and two, we’re going to provide our available resources to provide them opportunities.”
Black Pride will take over the Berkeley Renaissance Hotel for the weekend of August 14-17 and will showcase artists and activists from St. Louis’s black LGBTQ+ community throughout. Come ready for a Comedy Showcase featuring local and imported comics (Thursday), a networking Advocacy Day and Ball Event (Friday), the open Community Expo Day capped by the Black, White, and Pearls night gala (Saturday), and the Shades of Blue brunch and Poetry Slam (Sunday). Black pride and black joy *will* be on the menu; come hungry! blackpridestl.org
9. Alton Pride’s Pride Festival 2025 – September 13 – Alton: Belle St
Alton Pride is representing STL’s quaint northern neighbor with its fourth annual Alton Pride Festival! Invoking the Piasa Bird of the Mississippi cliffs for which Alton is known, 2025’s Alton Pride Festival slogan “Together We Rise” draws together all members of the broader regional community to gather and celebrate. The familial party will center on Belle Street outside the newly-renovated Bubby and Sissy’s, and will feature artisan booths, food trucks, live music, and a vivacious host of drag performances. altonpride.com
10. Tower Grove Pride’s TG Pride 2025 – September 27-28 – Tower Grove Park
I caught up with Angelo Ossessivo, Tower Grove Pride’s founder and executive director, while he was, appropriately, working on an art project. “We’re a community-driven Pride, and our success largely hinges on the participation of the many artist-vendors who have booth space at the festival,” Angelo says, pausing his work on a miniature landscape he was assembling. Now in its thirteenth year, Tower Grove Pride is well-established as a Pride of the People: more than three hundred booths sporting the wares of local queer artisans and craftspeople provide the backdrop for stages with a ragtag bunch of local minstrels, drag performers, and burlesquarians.
A whimsical, chaotic parade of bicycle-floats winds its way through the dense crowds, and favorite local eateries supply a picnic air in the shade of Tower Grove Park. When asked about the basis of Tower Grove Pride’s success, Angelo points to the simplicity of its operating model. “Our sponsor base are local St. Louis businesses. There aren’t many red hats around,” he alludes. “The strategy [our antagonists] would like to use against us is: divide and conquer. It’s easy to play whack-a-mole with all our identities individually. But when we’re all standing together, that’s a really, really big mole to whack.” towergrovepride.com
11. Metro East Pride’s Pride Fest 2025 – October 4 – Belleville Public Square
Metro East Pride’s 2025 Pride Fest, “Pride Without Borders,” is set to be hosted October 4, extending the Pride season into Autumn for the STL area. Shout out to the MEPSI board for the unambiguous messaging: “DIVERSITY. EQUALITY. INCLUSION.,” is front and center throughout their communications this year. Don’t want to wait for October to show your SoIL Pride? They’re also hosting a plein air Block Party Drag Show at 8pm on June 14 at Shoehorn Brewing! Pull up a lawn chair, crack a cold one, and let your colors fly. metroeastpride.org
12. Show-Me Bear’s Hibearnation 28 – October 30-November 3 – Downtown STL
You survived eleven Pride parties and came out the other side only to say, “You know what would make 2025 better? Warm fuzz!” Good news, friends: Hibearnation 28 is gearing up to be a good one. Read all about it here.
