9 June 4 - 10, 2026 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents this country. Even if difficult moments come, and they will, and they do, in spite of that, joy and truth and love remain powerful things. We’re made of those.” The Second Move The move of the parade to dowtown at an unprecedented time is a happy coincidence. Fair Park is being converted to the massive landing pad for World Cup spillover for the entire month of June and well into July. The FIFA Fan Fest, a free watch party on the fair- grounds, requires weeks of preparation. There’s simply no time to convert the grounds from the Pride Parade setup to Fan Fest. So the parade had to move. “It’s kind of a double-edged sword,” Grif- fin-Allison says. “You have an opportunity to be much more visible to more people and kind of branch out, being in downtown. So I can see the pluses and minuses.” The pluses are plentiful, says Jennifer Scripps, president and CEO of Downtown Dallas, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving and maintaining the city’s center. “I hope that this can become the perma- nent home,” Scripps says. “I love Fair Park, but I just see we’re by hotels, and we have such amazing access with public transporta- tion. … It’s great synchronicity. I see it as so exciting.” This year’s parade will make use of five of the city’s public parks, opening the green spaces as activation sites for the festivities. A highlight of this year’s production is the tim- ing of the parade. For the first time ever, the floats will go down the street at night, light- ing up the corridor. As part of a massive ef- fort to prepare the city for thousands of international visitors, downtown Dallas has been paid extra attention, with significant improvements and art installations that just so happen to be rainbows. “In many ways, this parade is just using a lot of the spaces that we’ve been working on already to welcome the world of soccer fans,” Scripps says. “Actually, it gives us kind of an enhanced deadline. Some of [the en- hancements] are multi-use. Obviously, FIFA is going to be very colorful. Pride is going to be very colorful. … I see it as glorious.” Pride Preparations Downtown Dallas is preparing to host an ex- pected 35,000 paraders, and the excitement is palpable within the organizations plan- ning the event and for the people attending, and the number could easily grow. Following legislative changes to LGBTQ+ rights and protections, the city of Arlington, which has historically hosted one of the state’s largest Pride celebrations, amended a 2021 anti-discrimination ordinance in a nar- row vote. The revisions removed “sexual orientation” and “gender identity or expres- sion” as protected terms, under the argu- ment that the ordinance was redundant, and state discrimination policies sufficed. In turn, the HELP Center for LGBTQ+ Health, the organization that planned the celebration, canceled its parade, leaving a large portion of North Texas’ queer commu- nity searching for a new home. Scripps wel- comes them to Dallas. “Any cultural celebration, anybody that wants to celebrate, bringing people to- gether, is wel- come in downtown Dal- las,” Scripps says. “What the world needs right now is gathering and humanity in a good way. If any- body in North Texas is looking for a fantastic way to celebrate Pride, welcome to Pride in downtown Dal- las. We can’t wait to see you.” The city’s Pride Parade, this year, is about more than cele- brating queer culture; it’s about protecting it and sharing one im- portant message: The LGBTQ+ community has always existed and it always will. “Dallas has al- ways been more diverse, creative and compassionate than people sometimes give it credit for,” Griffin-Allison says. “The LGBTQ community is not separate from Dallas. We are the fabric of this city and a huge part of it.” Alec Spicer The Rev. Rachel Griffin-Allison is a grand marshal of the parade.
