Capital Pride Alliance bidding to host WorldPride 2025 in Washington, D.C.
Organizers are hoping to they'll be named host city for the global Pride celebration, which would coincide with Capital Pride's 50th anniversary.
The Capital Pride Alliance has announced it is bidding to host WorldPride 2025, which will coincide with Capital Pride’s 50th anniversary celebration in June of that year.
WorldPride, licensed by InterPride and organized by member organizations, promotes visibility and awareness of the LGBTQ community and the issues impacting its members on an international level. Held every two years in a different host city, the event usually includes parades, marches, festivals, large-scale opening and closing ceremonies, and other cultural activities, such as a human rights conference.
A recent study conducted by Booz Allen Hamilton revealed that the annual Capital Pride celebrations, during non-pandemic years, result in approximately $371 million in positive impacts in the region — a number that could double if Washington, D.C. is awarded WorldPride.
“The bid process is similar to what the community has done in the past with Gay Games bids,” Ryan Bos, the executive director of the Capital Pride Alliance, told Metro Weekly in an interview. “We’ll be presenting our bid at our annual conference, which is in November. Every year, InterPride has an annual general meeting, and this year the cities who are looking to host WorldPride 2025 will be presenting. The member organizations will review our written bid and our presentation, ask questions, and vote to choose the host city for WorldPride 2025.”
InterPride’s general meeting this year will be held virtually from November 6-14.
Related: Capital Pride to host first annual Colorful Fest on third weekend in October
Regardless of whether D.C. is eventually named the host of WorldPride 2025, Bos noted that the Capital Pride Alliance will be asking the local community for support to begin planning special events to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Pride in the nation’s capital, which in itself is a special occasion.
Bos told Metro Weekly that as of now, Capital Pride organizers are being tight-lipped about what events they will be pitching to InterPride, but will do a follow-up announcement at a later point when they are able to provide more details.
“As you can imagine, though Capital Pride’s celebration is a large event that does draw attendees from around the world, hosting World Pride would only elevate that,” Bos said. “So it would provide many opportunities for our community to be even more visible, welcome travelers to the international city that we are, and hopefully we’ll be able to share more soon.”
For more information on the Capital Pride Alliance or Capital Pride-sponsored events, visit www.capitalpride.org.
For more information about WorldPride events, visit www.interpride.org/worldpride.
See also:
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