tri-Pride

CALLING ALL TRI-CITY BASED DRAG ARTISTS, MUSICIANS & DJs 🩷 Our annual Pride event, Summer Festival is just around the corner and we’re ready to find this years cast of entertainers to highlight both drag and musical excellence from right here in Cambridge, Kitchener & Waterloo. Every year, our performer lineup makes Pride as a celebration and protest, memorable. With thousands of folks attending each year, this is your opportunity to take on the biggest Pride stage in the Region and be a part of an epic 8-hour Pride extravaganza. We’re amped to be casting + compensating 12 unique local drag performances and 5 unique local music performances. 🩵 With a deep commitment to intentional and community-centred practices, we’re thrilled to once again host an open, equitable, and transparent CASTING CALL this year. If you’re a drag artist of any kind or a musician of any kind, we want to see what you’ve got! Simply submit an application which includes a demo reel using the link in our bio or via our website. You’ll find an entertainment criteria within the form so you know exactly what we’re looking for and how we’ll be make casting decisions. Applications due by May 1st! 🩷 Start your engines, local performers. This is your time! 🩵 Know a local drag or musical act that you think needs to be on the tri-Pride 2026 stage, send this to them!

Since 2022, tri-Pride’s annual Pride in the Park event has been titled SUMMERFEST. Originally, this was to distinguish the Pride in the Park Festival from tri-Pride facilitated Pride programming throughout the year. Since, it has been honored in recognition of other incredible community-led Pride events and festivals across the Region. tri-Pride is no longer the only Pride organization in town and we are so grateful for that; as both an indication of collective progress and demonstration of community capacity. 🏳️‍🌈 To us, as a volunteer-driven grassroots organization that boasts Pride in our name, SUMMERFEST and Pride in the Park are synonymous. And, we recognize that in our use of the event title, we have unintentionally reduced visibility around the historic and ongoing enduring significance of the language of Pride. As a team made up of primarily racialized and Indigenous Queer folk, we know all too well the importance of language in signaling safety and communicating belonging. While SUMMEREST continues to be the brand of the event, everything we do including Pride in the Park is built on a commitment to Queer community members and fostering spaces of gathering, celebration, resistance, and progress. 🏳️‍🌈 tri-Pride yesterday, tri-Pride today; tri-Pride tomorrow.

CALLING ALL TRI-CITY BUSINESSES, INDEPENDENT MAKERS & COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS 🏳️‍🌈 Our annual Pride event, Summer Festival is just around the corner and we’re ready to find this years vendor lineup that will animate the Marketplace at Summer-Fest, YEAR 30! Every year, we host close to 100 local, queer and queer-friendly businesses, Queer affirming services & makers that share their work with the thousands of folks that come out to honor and celebrate Pride. This year, we’re continuing to be extra intentional about making space for local, Queer and Indigenous organizations & businesses alongside allies. We want to see you out there with us! 🏳️‍🌈 Interested in selling your products and representing your work as a vendor at Summer-Fest ‘26 YEAR 30? Submit an application using the link in our bio or via our website by April 20th and expect to hear back no later than April 28th! The criteria we use to assess vendors is transparently accessible via the form! THE LIGHT IS COMING

Did you know every one of our events is held and made possible by volunteers? From our volunteer Board members to community members like yourself — volunteers share their time, energy and care to offer safer queer spaces for all of us. 🏳️‍🌈 PRIDE in the PARK (SUMMERFEST 2026) coming up on Saturday June 6th is no different and volunteers bring the day to life from set-up, parking, Smart Serve certified bartending, safety & care provision, facilitating programming, supporting entertainers and then take-down. Want to join the team of volunteer rockstars? Use the form in our bio to express your interest and tri-Pride Director of Volunteers will be in touch with you as opportunity for roles and needs become clear. 🏳️‍🌈 Better together, friends! THE LIGHT IS COMING

🔔THIS JUST IN KITCHENER, WATERLOO & CAMBRIDGE 🔔 After a few challenging months, your volunteer team at tri-Pride is thrilled to kick-off SUMMERFEST 2026; YEAR 30! Mark your calendars and make plans with your chosen family for Saturday June 6th. You’ve already heard about this years theme; where the darkness of the past year and the past 3 decades+ will meet the light we all are capable of producing and the life we manifest for the future. Light is unlimited and we can always make more. In that way, as Queer people; we remain undefeated, unwavering, and unapologetically proud. This year, we will penetrate shadow, together; where we are brightest. 🩵 VENDORS: local businesses & organizations, vendor marketplace is BACK and even more intentional. You can expect to see Vendor applications open in one week! This will be one to remember! 🩷 PERFORMERS: local drag & music performers, get ready for tri-Pride’s biggest stage yet! You can expect to see entertainment applications open in one week! 🩵 SPONSORS: tri-Pride is entirely volunteer driven with no sustainable funding. Sponsorships make the festival possible. Know or own a potential sponsor? Check out our 2026 SPONSORSHIP GUIDE! 🩷 VOLUNTEERS: interested in joining the tri-Pride team and joining a 30 year history? You can expect to see a call out on FRIDAY! 🩵 The Light is Coming. 06.06.2026. Sincerely, Your Queer neighbours who care -tri-Pride (Design work by our own, Kamil Ahmed who wanted this year’s emblem to be a gender-less celestial Queer being made of and exuding light).

🌈 SEEKING TRI-PRIDE SPONSORS 🌈 You already know that tri-Pride is entirely community-driven. Our offerings of safer spaces of joy, connection & belonging are made possible through grants, volunteer-run fundraising efforts and the generosity of SPONSORS. Sponsors can be local businesses, organizations, corporations, associations, foundations, coalitions or individuals. They are champions and advocates of the work! 🏳️‍🌈 Our biggest annual event, Tri-City PRIDE, aka SUMMER FESTIVAL is just around the corner and we’re inviting SUMMER-FEST SPONSORS. This year marks our 30th anniversary and we’re inviting you to join us in celebrating three decades of history + writing the next chapter with us. Check out the link in our bio for the 2026 SUMMERFEST SPONSORSHIP GUIDE which features sponsorship tiers & the recognition you could earn or head to our website at Tri-Pride.ca. Know a potential sponsor? Send them this post or the guide in our bio. THE LIGHT IS COMING

For 30 years, tri-Pride has been an entirely volunteer-imagined and volunteer-mobilized Pride organization; serving the tri-cities of Kitchener, Waterloo & Cambridge with the longest running Pride Festival in our Region. That is no small feat. And we’re not going anywhere. In fact, we’re imagining bigger, bolder, more decentralized, proportionally politicized, and tirelessly devoted to you. 2026 marks our 30th anniversary as an organization and for us, that means 30 years of standing on shoulders that came before us and embodying the shoulders for those who will come after us. It means acknowledging the land and its stewards that bear the scars of hard earned incomplete freedom. It means none of us are free until all of us are free. We hope you’ll hear from some of the icons that paved the way for us on the main stage and we aspire to become the doers whom the future leans on. We’re thrilled to announce the date and theme for this year’s festival; where the darkness of the past year and the past 3 decades+ will meet the light we all are capable of producing and the life we manifest for the future. Light is unlimited and we can always make more. In that way, as Queer people; we remain undefeated, unwavering, and unapologetically proud. This year, we will penetrate shadow, together; where we are brightest. The Light is Coming. 06.06.2026. Sincerely, Your Queer neighbours who care -tri-Pride

The weather is warming up and so are we…. 🔥 tri-Pride is BACK in session and we’re cooking your 2026 tri-city Pride Festival but as you wait, we thought we’d look back at 2025’s SUMMERFEST with this fun short video shot & edited by our friends and production partners in Pride @goodcoprod . 🩵 Are you ready for SUMMERFEST 2026 and OUR 30th anniversary? If not, we’ll get you ready! 🩷 Never got your SUMMERFEST 2025 photos? Download them using the link in our bio and revisit your time stitching together past, present, and Queer futures with meet & greet photos with @denalifoxx and coverage of the whole festival beautifully captured by @mandyblakephotography @ahumanliveshere 🔥 The light is coming….

OH YOU WANTED A VENDOR MARKETPLACE EH? 🏳️‍🌈 And we deliver! We crunched some stats and are proud to share the makeup of the VENDOR MARKETPLACE at SUMMERFEST 2025. From small-scale makers and local artisans to Queer-affirming social services and grassroots organizations, you don’t want to miss this pinnacle of community.

IT TAKES A COMMUNITY 🏳️‍🌈 With only 1 sleep left till SUMMERFEST 2025, we feel it important to highlight more of the busy hands and radiant hearts that are bringing your Pride to life. 🏳️‍⚧️ Meet your artists, photographers and production team. We’re thrilled to have the visual artistry of @mypeggypeg and @paigetheartmage who are helping materialize the vision of SUMMERFEST 2025 with installations. 🏳️‍🌈 Please say welcome back to our beautiful and infinitely talented photographers @mandyblakephotography and @ahumanliveshere . Do you like all the photos we’ve used in promotions from SUMMERFEST 2024? Yah that’s Mandy & Melissa! 🏳️‍⚧️ And it is with deep gratitude and beaming excitement that we share with you our production team. Offering excellence in show production as well as practicing excellence in performer care is very important to us so we knew exactly who to invite on this ride with us. You already know them from their intentionally community-centred music efforts locally from pop up concerts to the Meadows Music Festival — give it up for @goodcoprod . Helping us get the biggest tri-Pride stage to date, to supporting entertainers and running stage, lighting and sound tomorrow; we’re glad to be in Good Company.

You didn’t think we forgot about our kiddos did ya? 🩷 KIDZ ZONE IS BACK AND BIGGER THAN EVER 🩵 SUMMERFEST 2025 is an all-ages space for queer belonging & becoming. And that’s incomplete without your young ones. Kicking off right at noon, Kidz Zone will feature 8 hours of activities, programming & intentional care! We’re thrilled to feature the puppeteer pizazz of KEZ with a Kidz Zone exclusive show + workshop at 2pm. 🩷 Find out more at tri-pride.ca/kidszone. Gratitude to @spectrumwaterlooregion for their support in bringing Kidz Zone to life!

TRI-PRIDE PRESENTS: PRIDE GUIDE 2025 🩷 After a few years, we’re thrilled to revive the PRIDE GUIDE. What once was paid ad publication for local businesses & services has been transformed into a community-centred digital guide to tri-City Pride events this June, affirming services & organizations, and the SUMMERFEST 2025 schedule! 🩵 Thanks to the generosity of our sponsors, we were able to offer a free open call for Pride Guide submissions and you can find those submissions categorized in the Guide. 🤎 A PDF of the Pride Guide with accessible links is available in our bio. 🖤 SEE YOU SO SOON KITCHENER, WATERLOO & CAMBRIDGE!