What follows is one of the many articles in the Mercury‘s 2026 Queer Issue. Find a print copy here, subscribe to get a copy mailed to you here, and if you’re feeling generous and want to keep these types of articles coming, support us here.—eds.

Pride is year round, as the saying goes, but for Pride Northwest it’s doubly true. Portland’s Pride Parade is the largest in the state, and combined with the two-day weekend Waterfront Festival, the whole shebang attracts more than 70,000 visitors to the Rose City every year. Pride Northwest’s budget is slightly over a million dollars, but its organizers estimate the parade and festival generates $11.4 million in tax revenue for Portland’s economy, per a 2024 economic impact study they ordered.

“We have this amazing flashpoint moment,” says Ian Morton, programs director at Pride Northwest, the nonprofit that plans the festivities. “It’s a space that, no matter where you’re [from], you can come be with a critical mass of folks who represent your community.”

By the time Portland Pride heats up in July, Pride Northwest’s organizers will have already begun working on next year’s plans. So it goes for the small five-person team of core staff.

In keeping with this year’s theme—Made With Pride—we spoke to three of Pride Northwest’s five staffers who make the event happen every year. They took us through Portland’s Pride Parade planning process, which unfolds in varying levels of complexity at all times of year.

“People are not writing checks left and right, but we’re sharing way more spaces than we used to be, because it dawned on the movers and shakers in this town that we can’t keep getting left out,” says Debra Porta, Pride Northwest’s executive director.

From the festival’s end in July up to the holiday season months, Pride Northwest simultaneously closes out the old year and plans out the new one. Pride Northwest’s festival analysis wraps by August; parade permits open in September and festival permits open in December.

With the previous year officially wrapped and invoices paid by October, Pride Northwest gears up for its Powerfully Pink holiday season and lays more groundwork for next year. Headliner negotiations begin, as does brainstorming the year’s theme. Pride Northwest calculates how many vendors and parade delegations it can physically accommodate in the North Park Blocks and at Tom McCall Waterfront Park, and supplies needed from staging to tables to potties.

“The unsexy part is that there’s so much administrative work,” Morton says.

Planning turns to action in January, just after the new year. Orders are placed, headlining entertainment contract negotiations are underway, and the year’s theme is publicly announced. Preferred vendor applications open in January and usually fill by February. Pride Northwest prioritizes building relationships with organizations and businesses taking part in the festival, particularly small businesses and nonprofits directly tied to the LGBTQIA2S+ community. Public registration opens in March, which starts a waitlist process once full. With a clearer sense of who’s coming, Pride Northwest plans the festival’s layout and the parade’s order. It also recruits the army of volunteers that organizers repeatedly credit for the festival and parade’s success.

Headliners are announced in April—national drag entertainers Tenderoni, DeJa Skye, and Lushious Massacr will lead this year’s bill—as local entertainer applications open. Pride Northwest calls for talent through its website and social media channels, but similarly prioritizes entertainers who have previously entertained their crowds. Not everyone can make it every year, of course, so fresh faces are always welcome.

The all-hands-on-deck season begins in May as Pride Northwest battens down its hatches.

The festival and parade are in July, but Pride Northwest still hosts events in June like most of the country. This year, Pride Northwest held a kickoff party with Portland Gear on June 5, and will host a makers market at the Hotel Zags on June 13. It will co-sponsor a concert with vocalists Arietta Ward, Saeeda Wright, and Kourtni Capree Duv on June 14, and will appear at the Juneteenth Oregon Festival on June 20. June’s official activations end with a pageant at the Crystal Ballroom on June 21, where contestants vie for titles and the privilege of representing Pride Northwest at community partnership events like Oregon Ballet Theatre.

“We’re not celebrating Pride just to celebrate Pride, we’re doing it to be visible and move the mark,” says Henry Felton, Pride Northwest’s community outreach and events coordinator.

Morton says that when the festival finally hits in July, only three in seven people pay its suggested $10 donation. While charging more or making the fee mandatory would obviously boost Pride Northwest’s revenue, organizers would rather make do with a smaller budget than add an economic barrier for attendees.

“That’s why [other festivals are] able to have commercial, sleek, less community-feeling experiences that are more about the spectacle and the entertainment,” he says. “That’s different than who we are. We want ours to be a reflection of the Portland community, and we don’t see that being Portland’s values.”

Pride Northwest throws Portland’s biggest Pride celebrations, but its organizers are clear that it doesn’t want to define how the city and its neighborhoods do Pride.

“There is not one right or wrong way to ‘manifest Pride,’” she says. “Pride is the one thing, above and beyond anything else, that belongs to every single person in
our community.”