Come Out With Pride, Orlando’s LGBTQ+ Pride celebration held every October to coincide with National Coming Out Day, returns to Lake Eola Park Oct. 19 with its annual parade and festival.
Themed “Colors of Courage,” this year marks the 20th year of COWP in Orlando. While it wasn’t the first Pride event held in Orlando — Pride celebrations in Orlando go back to the 1990s — over the last two decades, COWP has become THE Pride celebration in The City Beautiful.
“[This year’s theme] comes from a mixture of celebrating the last 20 years and recognizing where we’ve been as a local community here in Orlando,” says COWP’s executive director Tatiana Quiroga. “And at the same time, recognizing where we are right now — it’s an election year and there are so many attacks already happening in Florida, so it’s important to celebrate Pride and keep in mind where we need to go.”
Last year’s event saw more than 220,000 attendees pour into Downtown Orlando for Pride, making it one of the biggest Prides in all of the Southeast and the largest single-day event in Central Florida.
IN THE BEGINNING…
The first COWP celebration was held at Heritage Square in front of the Orange County Regional History Center on Oct. 9, 2005. The result of a partnership between The Pride Chamber, known as the Metropolitan Business Association at the time, and the University of Central Florida’s Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Student Union. The groups held an open meeting in the Footlight Theatre at the Parliament House in July of that year to recruit volunteers to create a new Pride celebration.
That first year saw 10,000 people attend with a festival, a 3 p.m. parade beginning at Summerlin Ave. and future EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Awards) winner herself, Jennifer Hudson. While not an active member in putting the event together, Quiroga was there that first year.
“At the time I was just dating Jen, my wife now, and this was before we were having kids,” she recalls, adding that while it was much smaller than the Pride celebration we have today, it wasn’t any less magical.
“You only know what you know,” she says, “so at the time it was amazing to just see this event was even happening. The size of Pride has changed but the spirit of Pride has always been there.”
The success of that first year led COWP to extend the following year beyond its one-day event and included a Pride Kick-off Party at the Veranda.
COWP, with the help of the City of Orlando, relocated in 2007 to its current home at Lake Eola Park. That year, attendance tripled from that first year as Pride honored Broadway with its theme and entertainment, bringing in stage legend Jennifer Holiday for a concert at the Disney Amphitheatre.
Over the next several years, Pride continued to grow and expand, seeing tens of thousands of attendees fill the park and streets. Unfortunately, in 2011, it looked like Pride may not happen.
The weekend began well enough with a fashion show at The Abbey Orlando but by Saturday, a massive rainstorm caused the Pride parade and festival to be cancelled.
“I remember that Pride very well because our son was born over that weekend,” Quiroga says. “We were excited to be moms but disappointed that we were going to miss Pride but then it downpoured that day.”
Orlando wasn’t willing to let a year go by now without a Pride celebration, so with the help of the city, as well as local businesses and sponsors — including Watermark, who was that year’s presenting sponsor — Pride was able to take place a month later on Nov. 20.
“That year went from us having to miss Pride to attending our first Pride parade with our son,” Quiroga says. “We have pictures of him literally weeks old with us on the sidelines watching the parade. That was important to us because we said this day at the very least will be a day where our kids will be able to come out and see families that look just like theirs.”
Throughout the past 20 years, Orlando’s LGBTQ+ community has used the annual Pride festival and parade as a way to celebrate together as well as mourn together. In 2015, we gathered to celebrate the love that unites us all as months earlier, the Supreme Court recognized marriage equality in the U.S., and in 2016, we gathered to honor the lives lost at Pulse the previous June and celebrate the resilience of the community.
New board president, AJ Eagle says that since she didn’t come out until later in life, she always had blinders on when it came to being LGBTQ+ in Orlando and didn’t realize how much she needed the community until her first parade in 2017.
“I was on the sidelines just watching the parade,” she recalls, “and they were coming down the road with this huge rainbow flag and someone yanked me into the parade and said ‘hey, help carry this.’ So, I got under there and helped carry this mile-long flag and thought this is fun, and I started volunteering the next year.”
Eagle worked her way up from volunteering and onto the board, as did Quiroga, and both of them had front seats in 2020 to how COWP would handle COVID-19.
COWP adapted to the pandemic, and still were able to celebrate Pride with a 15-mile car parade through Orlando and a virtual event streamed live to the world. Quiroga became Pride’ executive director the following year with Eagle becoming board president in 2024.
Orlando’s post-COVID celebrations saw something else new brought into the fold as COWP returned to Lake Eola and downtown Orlando in 2021. That year’s theme of “No Lives Left Behind” was going to be a rallying cry to the community and uplift the transgender and nonbinary voices that are far too often relegated to the end of our LGBTQ+ conversations on equality.
After their first two marches in Washington, D.C., the leaders behind the National Trans Visibility March brought the third march to Orlando and it was going to coincide with COWP. That year’s festivities began with a Trans Rally and March and the success of that rally and march led to the creation of COWP’s Trans and Nonbinary Taskforce and the Central Florida Trans March the following year, an event that has been held in conjunction with COWP every year since.
“I’m so proud of this group,” Eagle says. “They are a force. They’ve taken on this huge task and found all of the needs and have filled them. I just love watching them grow, and it all started with making sure they had a voice on the board and that has led to them to create a whole year worth of programming.”
This year’ COWP festival has an entire area dedicated to the trans and nonbinary attendees with their own stage, tents, vendors, activities and more.
LEAD UP TO PRIDE
For its 20th Pride celebration, COWP has planned a weekslong schedule of events that not only honors the history of Orlando’s LGBTQ+ community but recognizes some of those local leaders currently making history in Florida.
The events begin the weekend prior to the Pride festival and parade with two events: one hosted by Hope CommUnity Center in Apopka and another hosted by Zebra Youth in Winter Park.
Meet in the Middle for Hope will be a rally at Kit Land Nelson Park in Apopka Oct. 12 that brings together the LGBTQ+ community for reflection, celebration and to renew the commitment to each other in the fight for equality.
Strikes for Stripes is Zebra Youth’s second annual bowling fundraiser and will be held at Aloma Bowling Center in Winter Park Oct. 13.
On Oct. 15, you can join Out & Proud Productions at the First United Methodist Church of Orlando for its first-ever Pride Variety Show.
Pride invites you to return to the First United Methodist Church of Orlando the following night as it hosts its 2024 Pride Diversity Concert: Colors of Courage Oct. 16. The concert is a collaboration with Orlando Gay Chorus, Central Florida Sounds of Freedom Band & Color Guard, Descolonizarte TEATRO, #amBiORL, All Voting Is Local and Del Ambiente.
Following that concert, head over to The Dark Room a The Dust for Blue LaLa’s Peek-a BOOOO-lesque, hosted by Blue Star and featuring Bella Marie, Misstiched, Gabriella Juliet and more.
On Oct. 17, you have a pair of official Pride events to chose from as Gnarly Barley hosts a Chappell Roan-themed Pride Bingo event with Brenda From Bithlow, who will then lead the crowd down the block to The Hammered Lamb for a Dance Party.
Watermark and Savoy Orlando will also host Movies Out Loud in Savoy’s Starlite Room Oct. 17. Come watch as Real Radio’s Sabrina Ambra and drag icon Trixie Deluxxe lampoon “Another Gay Movie.”
The night before the big event, head out to High Tide on Church St. for Brown Sugar Factory’s Pride Kick Off Party, hosted by Hers Brunch, Oct. 18. It promises to be the ultimate all-women’s event for girls who love girls.
DAY OF PRIDE
Pride’s big day will be Oct. 19 and will kick off with a Pineapple Brunch at Jack & Honey’s. This pre-Pride brunch will be hosted by April Fresh and will include performances by Mr. Florida Bobby Iman and Venezuela’s own Zeus Arem.
COWP’s festival, marketplace, sponsor walk and VIP experience will all begin at noon around Lake Eola Park and is showing signs that it will be the biggest yet, and that goes double for this year’s Trans March & Rally.
“We are always trying to find ways to better serve the trans and nonbinary community,” Quiroga says. “We are inviting smaller grassroots nonprofits and small businesses that are trans owned or service the trans community, giving those folks specifically a chance to join us for Trans Pride is a way for us to highlight those organizations and small businesses that may have otherwise been priced out of Pride.”
The Most Colorful Parade starts at 4 p.m. with a new parade route this year.
“I know change can be scary but this is a good problem to have actually,” says Quiroga. “The city came to us and asked if we could change the parade route because of how much we have grown over the last few years. We outgrew our past parade route so the city asked us to go down wider streets because of the amount of people who have been coming out and how large the parade has gotten.”
This year’s parade route begins on Orange Ave. and E. Washington St. and travels down to E. Central Blvd., heading up N. Rosalind Ave., around onto W. Robinson St. and finishes at the corner of Robinson and N. Eola Dr.
The parade will be led by this year’s grand marshals: HGTV star David Bromstad, trans advocate Ashley Figueroa and intersex activist Juleigh Mayfield. You can read more about these LGBTQ+ champions, as well as this year’s Debbie Simmons Community Excellence Award winner, The Center Orlando’s CEO Dr. George Wallace, and the Sam Singhaus Legends in Pride Award winer, drag legend Ginger Minj, in the official COWP Guide.
After Pride’s fireworks show over Lake Eola, head over to The Abbey Orlando for COWP’s official after party.
But the festivities do not end there.
The following day on Oct. 20, join Pride and Watermark at The Plaza Live for a screening of the documentary film “Greetings From Queertown: Orlando.” Following the film there will be a panel discussion with the creators and stars of the film as well as a live performance of the film’s theme song, sung by Ginger Minj. Read more and purchase tickets here.
Come Out With Pride celebrates its 2oth anniversary Oct. 19. For more information on all of Pride’s official events, visit Come OutWithPride.org. You can also learn more about Pride’s grand marshals, award recipients, event sponsors and more by picking up a copy of the official Come Out With Pride guide, out now. You can find the digital version of the guide here.
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