Muscogee County Georgia Columbus Georgia LGBT Pride Festival

Columbus, the seat of Muscogee County on the Chattahoochee River, has a Pride festival whose published record spans two name forms, two home grounds and a closing chapter its own organiser has already announced in public. In its recent layers the organiser publishes the event as the Columbus Georgia LGBTQ+ Pride Festival, while a news report from 2018 called it the Columbus Georgia LGBT Pride Festival, the wording this title carries, and a city guide for LGBTQ travellers shortens the name to Columbus Pride. Those forms belong to different years and different publications, so this article keeps them apart rather than settling on one. What the record describes is a June festival documented first on Broadway in Uptown Columbus, later centred on Woodruff Riverfront Park, and now directed toward a farewell: the organiser has announced that the edition of June 5–6, 2027, billed as the fourteenth annual, will be its final Pride festival in this city.

About the Festival

The organising body appears in print under more than one spelling, and the layers are recorded here exactly as they print it. A news layer spells the organiser Colgay Pride, while the organiser’s own layers use ColGay Pride and the fuller ColGay Pride of Columbus Georgia; no single spelling is crowned in this article, because the sources themselves never settled on one. A local news layer reports that the group’s own logo dates the organisation to 2013, and that date belongs to the group alone. It is not a founding year for the festival, and no layer consulted states a founding year for the festival as such. Readers who meet the organiser under one spelling in a news report and another on its own pages are meeting the same organisation; the variation is a printing habit across layers, not evidence of two bodies, and the festival’s organiser has never been in dispute even where the capitalisation of its name has wandered.

Two grounds anchor the documented editions. The earlier home was Broadway in Uptown Columbus, where a 2023 organiser ticketing layer places the festival on the center median at Eleventh and Twelfth Street, at 1100 Broadway, and where the 2018 edition also stood. The later home is Woodruff Riverfront Park, which an organiser review layer names for the June 2025 edition and a local news layer names for the 2026 opening show. No layer states where the announced 2027 edition will be held, and this article does not guess.

No admission price for the Pride festival is published in the organiser or news layers consulted. That silence is a gap in the record, not a promise: this article asserts no price, and it does not claim that entry is free.

Quick Facts

Item	What the record shows
Published names	Columbus Georgia LGBTQ+ Pride Festival in the organiser layers of 2023 and 2025; Columbus Georgia LGBT Pride Festival in a 2018 news layer; Columbus Pride in a city-guide layer
Organiser	Printed as Colgay Pride in a news layer and as ColGay Pride or ColGay Pride of Columbus Georgia in the organiser’s own layers
Host city	Columbus, the Muscogee County seat
Documented grounds	The Broadway center median at Eleventh and Twelfth Street, 1100 Broadway, in 2018 and 2023; Woodruff Riverfront Park in 2025 and for the 2026 opening show
Earliest dated edition in the record	June 1–2, 2018, on Broadway
Most recent documented edition	June 12–13, 2026, opening at Woodruff Riverfront Park with a parade up Broadway
Announced final edition	June 5–6, 2027, billed as the fourteenth annual and announced as the last in Columbus
Admission	No price is published in any layer consulted
Attendance	More than one thousand five hundred participants reported for 2018; over five thousand eight hundred people claimed by the organiser for 2022; no counted or official figure exists
Status	The organiser has announced it is moving and closing its Columbus doors after the June 2027 edition

History

The documented trail opens in 2018, when a student news layer reported the fifth LGBT Pride Festival on June 1–2, held on Broadway. That fifth is a billing printed by one news layer, nothing more; it is not converted here into a first year, and the same discipline applies to every billing that follows. The 2018 programme, as that layer describes it, joined a Pride Month proclamation ceremony with the Mr. and Miss Columbus Georgia Pride pageant, a night show and a moment of silence, and the report put participation at more than one thousand five hundred people.

For a useful comparison, see the Muscogee County Georgia Columbus Barks and Blues Festival for another county festival.

Five years later the organiser’s ticketing layer billed the June 3, 2023 edition, running from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. on the Broadway median, as the tenth Annual Columbus Georgia LGBTQ+ Pride Festival, and the same layer marked a tenth anniversary of operations. Those two tenths are different claims: one counts festival editions as the organiser bills them, the other marks the organisation’s own milestone, and neither is treated here as a founding date. The 2023 programme, in the organiser’s layer, set a vendor and sponsor market along Broadway and a proclamation reading under the theme Together We Rise. An organiser ticketing page also carries the claim that over five thousand eight hundred people attended in 2022; that figure is the organiser’s own claim, not a count, and no official figure exists for any year.

By June 2025 the festival’s documented home had shifted to Woodruff Riverfront Park, where an organiser review layer places that month’s edition without captured days. In 2026 the organiser’s Pride page, as reported by local news, billed the thirteenth Pride Festival across June 12–13: an opening show on Friday, June 12, at the riverfront park, and a parade on Saturday, June 13, running from Front Avenue and Ninth Street up Broadway to Thirteenth Street, with a Pulse remembrance ceremony in the programme. Then, in October 2026, local news reported the organiser’s home page statement that after fourteen years it is moving and closing its doors in Columbus forever, with the June 2027 Pride as its last Columbus festival.

What to Expect

What a visitor meets depends on which documented edition supplies the pattern, because the programme elements belong to their years and are not interchangeable. From the Broadway era, the 2023 edition offers the fullest single-day picture: a market of vendors and sponsors spread along the street, a formal proclamation reading, and a theme, Together We Rise, framing the day. From 2018 come the pageant bearing the Mr. and Miss Columbus Georgia Pride titles, the night show and the moment of silence. From 2026 comes the two-part shape of an opening show beside the river on Friday and a parade climbing Broadway on Saturday, with a remembrance ceremony woven into the weekend. Food, drink and merchandise specifics beyond the market are not detailed in the layers consulted, and nothing from one year’s programme is promised for another year here. The layers also agree on what they leave out: no edition in the record publishes a stage-by-stage running order, a vendor count or a parade line-up beyond the elements named above, so the honest picture is of a street and park festival assembled around a market, a ceremony, a show and a parade, with the fine detail varying by year and announced, when it is announced at all, much closer to the day.

Planning Your Visit

Anchor your planning on the announced final edition, June 5–6, 2027, and treat every practical detail beyond those dates as unconfirmed until the organiser publishes more. The record does not state the 2027 venue, so a plan built on either Broadway or Woodruff Riverfront Park would rest on an assumption; the two grounds are close neighbours in the Uptown and riverfront district, and checking the organiser’s own announcements nearer the time is the only reliable way to fix the setting. Hours are likewise unpublished for 2027: the 2023 edition ran from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., but that schedule belongs to 2023 alone.

Budgeting needs the same caution. No admission price appears anywhere in the record, so allow for the possibility of costs the sources never printed, from parking to market purchases, rather than assuming a free day. June in Columbus is hot and humid, and both documented grounds are open-air, so water, shade breaks and sunscreen belong in any plan. Because the organiser has announced that this edition closes its Columbus story, anyone who has meant to attend a Columbus Pride under this organiser has a stated deadline rather than an open-ended invitation.

A Sample Itinerary From the 2026 Shape

The fullest recent pattern is the two-day shape of June 2026, and an itinerary modelled on it runs as follows. Friday belongs to the riverfront: arrive at Woodruff Riverfront Park in good time for the opening show, settle in on the grass, and let the evening performance open the weekend at an easy pace. Saturday belongs to Broadway: take up a position along the parade route between Front Avenue and Ninth Street and Thirteenth Street before the parade steps off, watch it climb the street, and leave room afterwards for the remembrance ceremony that the 2026 programme included. This is a model built from one documented edition, not a schedule for 2027, whose arrangements the record does not yet describe.

How It Compares

Two of the organiser’s other events are easily confused with this festival and are distinct from it. Its Halloween Festival and its Diversity Saturday events are held at its Sixteenth Avenue address, and that address belongs to those events’ context; it has never been the Pride festival’s venue in any layer consulted, and neither event is a seasonal edition of Pride. Further afield, Atlanta Pride and the other Pride events held across Georgia are separate festivals run by other organisations, and nothing in this record connects them to the Columbus event beyond a shared word in their names.

A Visitor Checklist

• Confirm the June 5–6, 2027 dates against the organiser’s own announcements before booking travel
• Wait for a published venue rather than assuming Broadway or Woodruff Riverfront Park
• Carry water and sun protection for open-air June weather in Columbus
• Bring money for market stalls and refreshments, since no admission price is published either way
• Plan parade viewing along Broadway between Ninth Street and Thirteenth Street if the 2026 pattern is repeated
• Leave the Sixteenth Avenue events for their own dates, as they are separate from the Pride festival
• Check for a published programme nearer the time, because no 2027 running order exists in the record yet

Beyond the Festival

A trip built around Pride weekend can take in the two grounds that frame the festival’s own story: the Broadway corridor in Uptown Columbus, with its median, theatres and restaurants, and the riverfront along the Chattahoochee, where Woodruff Riverfront Park anchors the 2025 and 2026 layers of the record. Columbus itself is the Muscogee County seat and the county’s urban centre, so the courthouse district, the riverwalk and the Uptown blocks all sit within the same compact area a festival visitor already occupies. Nothing in the layers consulted ties specific attractions to the festival programme, so sightseeing is best treated as the visitor’s own addition rather than part of the event.

Why This Festival Matters

Within its own record, the festival matters as a documented thread in the public life of a mid-sized Georgia city: a proclamation ceremony appears in its programme in both 2018 and 2023, which places city recognition inside the event’s own history as the layers report it, and its billings trace an unbroken self-count from the fifth festival in 2018 to the fourteenth annual announced for 2027. The announced ending gives that thread a defined shape. The organiser’s statement that it is closing its Columbus doors after the June 2027 edition turns the next festival into a farewell as well as a celebration, and this article records that plainly, without guessing where the organisation’s work may continue.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which name is the right one, LGBT or LGBTQ+?

Both forms are published, in different layers and years. The organiser’s layers from 2023 and 2025 use Columbus Georgia LGBTQ+ Pride Festival, a news layer from 2018 used Columbus Georgia LGBT Pride Festival, and a city guide shortens the name to Columbus Pride. This article keeps each form in its own layer rather than merging them into a single settled name.

Has an admission price ever been published for this festival?

No price appears in the organiser or news layers consulted, for any edition. That gap is stated here as a gap: no price is asserted, and the absence of a printed price is not treated as proof that entry is free.

What attendance figures exist for the festival?

Two labelled figures exist, and neither is an official count. A student news layer reported more than one thousand five hundred participants in 2018, and the organiser’s ticketing page claims over five thousand eight hundred people attended in 2022. No counted or official figure exists for any edition.

Is the festival really ending in Columbus?

That is what the organiser has announced. Local news reported in October 2026 that the organiser’s home page states it is moving and closing its doors in Columbus forever after fourteen years, with the June 2027 Pride as its last Columbus festival. Whether anything continues elsewhere is not stated in the record.

What to Expect From the Next Muscogee County Georgia Columbus Georgia LGBT Pride Festival

How often is Muscogee County Georgia Columbus Georgia LGBT Pride Festival held?

The documented editions in the record fall in June: 2018, 2023, 2025 and 2026 are all June editions, and the announced final edition is also set for June. The organiser’s own billings count the festivals in sequence, from the fifth in 2018 to the fourteenth annual announced for 2027, but the Columbus sequence is announced to end there.

When is the next Muscogee County Georgia Columbus Georgia LGBT Pride Festival?

The next edition is the announced final one: June 5–6, 2027, billed by the organiser as the fourteenth annual and reported by local news as its last Pride festival in Columbus. The record does not state a venue for those dates, and no later Columbus edition is announced anywhere in the layers consulted.

Will the dates change?

The June 5–6, 2027 dates come from the organiser as reported by local news, and nothing in the record revises them. Because the same announcement declares the edition to be the last in Columbus, the more significant question is not whether the dates move but that no subsequent Columbus dates exist in the record at all.

The Columbus record therefore closes with unusual clarity for a festival history: a documented run from Broadway to the riverfront, a self-counted sequence reaching its fourteenth billing, and a final date already printed. Readers who want to stand on Broadway or the riverfront grass for a Columbus Pride under this organiser have one announced opportunity left, on June 5–6, 2027, and this article will need no sequel unless the organiser itself writes one.