Pride Houston 365, the group that puts on the city’s annual celebration of LGBTQ+ pride, announced Sunday the new parade will be held on Saturday, Aug,15. The announcement was made in an Instagram post.
“Let’s make August 15 iconic—The Parade is officially happening, and we’re coming louder than ever,” Pride Houston 365 said on Sunday.
The 48th annual Houston Pride parade had originally been scheduled to take place June 6, the first weekend of LGBTQ+ Pride Month, but torrential downpours forced organizers to cancel the event just hours before it got underway. The pre-parade festival in Downtown Houston still went on sans-parade. Pride Houston 365 said after the rescheduling that it was working with the city to find a new date for the parade later in the summer.
“Our thanks to the Mayor’s Office of Special Events for opening up dates that ensured Pride could still take place this year,” Pride Houston 365 said in its announcement post.
Pride Houston 365 made the announcement on the last weekend of June, which has traditionally been when the parade and festival take place. The group previously said citywide permitting constraints related to the tournament forced it to move the parade to the first weekend of June.
The new date puts Houston Pride closer to many of its contemporary parades around the state but later than most major U.S. cities. The City of Austin will hold its Pride celebration in August. Many Houston-area suburban LGBTQ+ groups hold their pride events at later dates in the year so as not to conflict with Houston’s.
Sunday saw New York City hold its annual Pride celebration, the largest in the nation and one of the largest in the world; Chicago and San Francisco also held theirs on Sunday. Most major pride celebrations are held on June 28 to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall Riots, a series of riots, protests and demonstrations stemming from a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a New York City gay bar. The Stonewall Riots are considered to be a major catalyst in the modern fight for LGBTQ+ rights, and Pride Month is celebrated in June in part because of them.