Kansas City PrideFest is the city’s annual LGBTQ+ pride festival and parade, held on a June weekend and presented by Our Spot KC.1 Its organizers date the celebration to June 1975, when the Gay People’s Union and the Kansas City Women’s Liberation Union staged the city’s first three-day Pride festival at a group of houses just off 39th and Paseo — picnics, dancing and live entertainment.1 The 2025 edition was billed as the 50th anniversary, held June 6-8 at Theis Park south of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art under the theme “Bold & Gold.”21 It has moved venue more often than any other recurring festival in this Wiki, and the moves are most of its history.

Venues, 1975-present

The festival’s own history page recorded the chronology below before the domain lapsed; it is preserved here from the Internet Archive.3

YearsSite
1975Gay Community House, 3825 Virginia
1978-79Penn Valley Park / Liberty Memorial
1988-92Southmoreland Park
1993Roanoke Park
1994Penn Valley Park / Liberty Memorial
1995-2003Barney Allis Plaza — 2002 was the last Gay Pride Parade of that era
2004-2009Penn Valley Park / Liberty Memorial
2010Berkley Riverfront Park
2011-2012Power & Light District
2013Westport
2014West Bottoms
2015-2019Berkley Riverfront Park
2025Theis Park (50th anniversary)21

⚠ 2020-2024 are not recorded on this page. The archived history table lists them as “TBA” and was never updated; the site it lived on is gone. The gap spans the COVID-19 years and the organizational change described below, and it is a real hole in the record rather than a formatting artifact. for the 2020-2024 dates and venues.

Organizers

The archived site describes PrideFest as run by “a mix of volunteers and Kansas City Diversity Coalition board members,” operating as a 501(c)(3) from PO Box 32413.3 The festival is now presented by Our Spot KC, and James Moran of that organization spoke for it publicly through the 2025 anniversary season.1 The transition between the two bodies is undocumented here.

Alongside the festival and parade, the current organization runs a KC Pride Royalty court pageant, a talent show, a youth prom and the Out Here Now LGBT+ film festival.2

The 2025 anniversary season

The 50th-anniversary festival ran June 6-8, 2025 at Theis Park, with the parade stepping off at 11 a.m. Saturday, June 7.1 It was staged into a sharply worse funding climate: Moran told KCUR that “we’ve had sponsors that have gone from amounts as large as $25,000 down under $2,000,” and that some remaining sponsors asked to stay anonymous.1 Organizers nonetheless expanded health programming, adding a Health Village offering free breast-cancer, colon-cancer, dental and heart screenings.1

The sponsorship figure is recorded as what an organizer stated to a news outlet about his own organization’s finances, which is what it is — not an audited account of the festival’s budget.

Recognition — The Pitch Best of KC

Voted by Pitch readers, with vote counts as the poll reported them.4

YearGroupCategoryPlacingVotesEntered as
2021Arts & EntertainmentBest Cultural EventFinalist282Kansas City PrideFest5
2022Arts & EntertainmentBest Cultural EventWinner293Kansas City PrideFest6
2023Arts & EntertainmentBest Cultural EventWinner439Kansas City PrideFest7
2023Arts & EntertainmentBest Local EventRunner-Up507Kansas City PrideFest8
2024Arts & EntertainmentBest Outdoor EventWinner576KC Pride9
2025Arts & EntertainmentBest Cultural EventWinner270KC Pride10
2025People & PlacesBest Outdoor EventWinner479KC PrideFest11

Five wins across five years. Note that the 2025 “Best Outdoor Event” placing sits in the People & Places group, not Arts & Entertainment — the poll moved the category between years. The poll lists it under three different names, which is why this page carries all three as aliases.

Sources

Footnotes

  1. “Kansas City PrideFest celebrates 50th anniversary despite hostile politics and sponsor losses” — KCUR 89.3, Up To Date, 2026-06-04 broadcast page (accessed 2026-09-12) · Asserts: the 1975 founding by the Gay People’s Union and Kansas City Women’s Liberation Union at houses off 39th and Paseo, with picnics, dancing and live entertainment; 2025 dates June 6-8 at Theis Park south of the Nelson-Atkins; parade 11 a.m. Saturday June 7; James Moran of Our Spot KC as organizer; the $25,000-to-under-$2,000 sponsorship quote and anonymous sponsors; the Health Village screenings. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  2. Kansas City Pride — official site, kcpride.org (accessed 2026-09-12) · Asserts: “50 incredible years of KC PrideFest” and the June 6-8, 2025 dates under the “Bold & Gold” theme; the parade, Royalty court pageant, talent show, youth prom and Out Here Now film festival as the organization’s other programs. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. “Festival History: 1975-2014” — Kansas City PrideFest official site, archived (accessed 2026-09-12) · Asserts: the full venue chronology 1975-2019 reproduced above; “2002: Last Gay Pride Parade”; 2025 marked as the 50th anniversary; the Kansas City Diversity Coalition as the presenting body; 501(c)(3) status and the PO Box 32413 address. ⚠ kcpridefest.org is a dead domain — as of 2026-09-12 it resolves to an unrelated offshore gambling site. Cite the archive URL, never the live one. ↩ ↩2

  4. All Pitch Best of KC placings on this page are taken from the first-party SceneThink winners portals, harvested 2026-09-12 and held at 05_Operations/Pitch-Best-Of-KC-Awards-2021-2025.csv. Method, per-year portal slugs and coverage limits are recorded alongside the dataset in the KS.City award record. ↩

  5. The Pitch, Best of KC 2021 — Arts & Entertainment, Best Cultural Event: Kansas City PrideFest, Finalist, 282 votes (portal accessed 2026-09-12) ↩

  6. The Pitch, Best of KC 2022 — Arts & Entertainment, Best Cultural Event: Kansas City PrideFest, Winner, 293 votes (portal accessed 2026-09-12) ↩

  7. The Pitch, Best of KC 2023 — Arts & Entertainment, Best Cultural Event: Kansas City PrideFest, Winner, 439 votes (portal accessed 2026-09-12) ↩

  8. The Pitch, Best of KC 2023 — Arts & Entertainment, Best Local Event: Kansas City PrideFest, Runner-Up, 507 votes (portal accessed 2026-09-12) ↩

  9. The Pitch, Best of KC 2024 — Arts & Entertainment, Best Outdoor Event: KC Pride, Winner, 576 votes (portal accessed 2026-09-12) ↩

  10. The Pitch, Best of KC 2025 — Arts & Entertainment, Best Cultural Event: KC Pride, Winner, 270 votes (portal accessed 2026-09-12) ↩

  11. The Pitch, Best of KC 2025 — People & Places, Best Outdoor Event: KC PrideFest, Winner, 479 votes (portal accessed 2026-09-12) ↩

See also

Categories
  • Wiki Page
  • Event
  • Lgbtq
  • Southmoreland
  • Modern

On the record — ks.city/wiki/events/kansas-city-pridefest · last revised 2026-09-12