Cynthia Erivo to Headline WorldPride Concert on June 7
Organizers announced that award-winning actress and singer Cynthia Erivo will headline WorldPride's Street Festival and Concert on June 7.
Grammy, Emmy, and Tony Award winner Cynthia Erivo has been announced as a headliner of the WorldPride 2025 Street Festival and Concert.
Erivo, a three-time Oscar nominee who portrayed Elphaba in 2024’s blockbuster movie Wicked, and who will reprise the role later this year in Wicked Part 2, frequently uses her platform to uplift diverse voices, champion inclusivity, and promote equity and greater LGBTQ representation and visibility.
Last fall, she was honored at the Human Rights Campaign National Dinner, where she was presented with the organization’s National Equality Award.
“We’re thrilled,” Ryan Bos, executive director of Capital Pride Alliance, which is hosting WorldPride 2025, told Metro Weekly about Erivo’s appearance. “Cynthia is someone personally who I have come to admire from shows she’s performed on Broadway to most recently in Wicked, and we’re excited to have her as a headliner.”
The street festival and concert, which will take place from noon to 10 p.m. on Saturday, June 7 and Sunday, June 8, brings together hundreds of thousands of LGBTQ attendees from across the globe, along with exhibitors, artisans, and food and drink vendors, to celebrate Pride month.
The festival will take place along Pennsylvania Avenue NW, between 9th and 3rd Streets, with performers, including Erivo, appearing on the concert stage, juxtaposed against the backdrop of the U.S. Capitol building.
Bos said that additional artists and musical acts for the WorldPride’s Closing Night Concert on the evening of June 8 would be announced in the coming weeks. Erivo will perform at the festival on Saturday, June 7, due to her hosting gig at the Tony Awards on June 8.
This year’s WorldPride theme, “The Fabric of Freedom,” is intended to promote unity among membrs of the LGBTQ community while urging them to be resilient in the face of a global backlash against LGBTQ visibility and the erosion of the rights and protections of sexual and gender minorities.
This need for resilience and resistance is underscored by the fact that WorldPride is being hosted in the United States during a presidential administration whose leader, Donald Trump, frequently vilifies members of the LGBTQ community as “groomers,” as dangers to women and children, as dangers to national security, and as deviants who refuse to adhere to the traditional norms for gender expression or sex-based stereotypes.
Organizers said in a news release that they hoped that Erivo’s headlining performance would be an “extraordinary moment of unity, celebration, and visibility for our global LGBTQ+ community.”
Bos told Metro Weekly that “Cynthia Erivo’s powerful artistry and unwavering advocacy make her the perfect artist to headline this momentous event.”
The festival and Saturday concert will overlap with the two-day WorldPride Music Festival at RFK Stadium, which will feature headliner Jennifer Lopez on Saturday night. (Troye Sivan headlines the Music Festival on Friday, June 6.) Other artists schedule to appear at the music festival include Galantis, Kim Petras, Marina, Tinashe, and RuPaul, spinning a DJ set.
Those who want to see Erivo and Lopez will, unfortunately, have to choose one or the other on June 7. Bos noted, however, that it is more important to ensure there are multiple offerings and events for WorldPride participants to attend. Attendance is projected to be in the millions.
“We’re excited to have such great talent wanting to be a part of WorldPride,” he said. “Again, this is a time where we need folks who feel comfortable to stand up in solidarity with our community, and there will be millions of people in Washington. So, we need to ensure that we provide a variety of opportunities for folks to engage and participate. Not everyone will be able to fit over at RFK or on Pennsylvania Avenue. So we’re excited to be able to provide a little bit of everything for people to enjoy.”
For more information on WorldPride’s programming and events, visit WorldPrideDC.org.
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