Pride Houston Presenting WorldPride 2023 Bid Today!

WorldPride has been taking place for over twenty years, and has only been hosted by a US city only once.   New York got that honor largely on the strength of this year being the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion that jumped off the modern TBLGQ rights movement.

Today the Pride Houston team is presenting their bid to the Interpride International Association of LGBTI Pride Organizers conference in Athens, Greece.  They are also busy lobbying to get the 51% of votes from all the registered pride orgs there to bring World Pride 2023 to Houston.

Bids are also being presented by Sydney, Australia and Montreal, Canada to bring WorldPride 2023 to their locales. 

If Pride Houston is successful, the month long Houston World Pride event in June 2023 would take place during the 40th anniversary of Houston's pride parade and the 20th anniversary of the Lawrence v. Texas SCOTUS case that nullified the Texas and national sodomy laws.

It would not only have opening and closing ceremonies at NRG Stadium, but a parade, TBLGQ themed panel discussions, cultural events and an international human rights conference at various locales across our diverse city.   

Rice University, Texas Southern University and the University of Houston would also be involved in the diverse programming planned for this event that can draw up to 5-10 million international tourists. 

We also have no problem getting them here because Houston is one of the only cities that has airline connections to every inhabited continent on the planet via Bush IAH .

Houston would also become the second US city to host WorldPride, and the first in the southern US.

We'll find out Sunday Athens time (late Saturday night Houston time) if we do, and best of luck to our Pride Houston team in potentially bringing Pride Houston to the Lone Star State.

TransGriot Update: Sydney, Australia was chosen to host WorldPride 2023 

Houston's World Pride 2023 Host Application Approved

We are one step closer to hosting World Pride 2023 in H-town! 

Pride Houston, the nonprofit that organizes our LGBT Pride Parade and festival and who is coordinating our hosting bid, announced that their application to the WorldPride Committee of InterPride was unanimously approved.   Our competition for the 2023 WorldPride bid, Sydney, Australia and Montreal, Canada also had their WorldPride bids accepted by the committee. 

Interestingly enough Austin, TX is bidding for the 2025 WorldPride against Rome, Italy.

Representatives from Pride Houston, Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and Fierte Montreal will travel to Athens, Greece next month for the annual meeting to present their bids to the WorldPride Committee

The bids are then voted on, with the winning group getting to host WorldPride

I believe our toughest competition is Sydney.  WorldPride has never been held in Australia or the Southern Hemisphere, and New York just hosted it in the US for the first time ever this year in large part because of the Stonewall 50th anniversary. 

Montreal also has the problem of a WorldPride recently being held in their nation in Toronto, and being a 5 hour drive from New York that just hosted it.

Houston would also be another first time city with the advantages of nonstop international air travel to much of the globe from IAH and Hobby, in addition to being a large international city as well.

When the 2020 Census is completed, Houston is expected to officially pass Chicago to become the third largest city in the United States.


We'll find out next month if a Texas city gets a WorldPride.   Hopefully it will be Houston that will be that city

Houston Puts In Bid For 2023 World Pride!

I got a small taste of WorldPride when I made that quick trip to New York last month to participate in the opening ceremony for it at Barclays Center.   There's now a possibility that I may get to stay in my H-town backyard and participate in a WorldPride. 

So what's WorldPride?   It's an international Pride event sponsored by InterPride, the international organization that represents and is composed of producer organizations of TBLGQ community pride events from around the globe. 

WorldPride is generally a month long and is comprised of parades, panel discussions, parties and other events that celebrate the TBLGQ community.

The first one was held in Rome in 2000, and since then has held in Jerusalem  (2006),  London (2012), Toronto (2014), Madrid (2017)  and the just completed one in New York for the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion 

It was the first time that WorldPride was ever held in the US, and New York successfully handled their business, drawing over 5 million attendees for it.   

WorldPride will next be held in Copenhagen, Denmark and Malmo, Sweden from August 12-22, 2021 to coincide with the 70th anniversary of Christine Jorgensen's successful GCS in 1951 and the 50th anniversary of the 1971 founding of the Danish chapter of the Gay Liberation Front.

The EuroGames will also be held in the two cities during WorldPride.

Pride Houston, our local group that coordinates our local pride event, has put together a bid to host the 2023 WorldPride event.   We have the fourth largest pride event in the United States (after New York, LA and Chicago), are the fourth largest city in the US (at least until we leapfrog Chicago to become the third largest after the 2020 census) and the only one that  has a nighttime parade.

Houston will be competing to get the WorldPride bid against Sydney, Australia and Montreal, Canada.   Pride Houston will have a 30 minute presentation to make at the InterPride annual meeting being held in Athens, Greece this October in order to secure it.

Houston Pride President and CEO Lorin Roberts (yep, my cousin) believes that we can do so. 

"We're Houston, where everything is bigger and better. Our main thing when it comes to this bid, is that even though we're a small town in the south of the U.S., you can see the world when you come to Houston," Roberts said in an ABC13 interview .

The theme for our Houston WorldPride 2023 bid is "Come to Houston, See the World, Feel Your Pride."   We are considered one of the most diverse cities in the United States, and only New York has more international consulates than we do.   
"We're trying to win this thing because we see so much in Houston as a Pride organization and within our community, that we just want to share with the rest of the world," Roberts said.

If we get WorldPride 2023, it would also be happening during the 45th anniversary of Pride Houston's formation and the 20th anniversary of the Lawrence v Texas SCOTUS case that declared sodomy laws unconstitutional in Texas  and a dozen US states. .

Good luck, and hope it does happen for us.   Would love to experience a WorldPride without having to leave Texas to do it .