In the two years since D.C. was named host of WorldPride 2025, local LGBTQ+ business owners and performers expressed excitement about the opportunity to celebrate and showcase the community on a global stage.
WorldPride, a series of events organized in conjunction with a city’s Pride month celebration put together by InterPride — an organization that advances awareness of LGBTQ+ rights — has been held nine times so far since 2000 at a different city throughout the world and was last hosted in Sydney, Australia, in 2023. To honor 50 years since the District’s first Gay Pride Day, D.C. is hosting the festivities from May 17–June 8, including a parade and a two-day music festival featuring Troye Sivan and Jennifer Lopez.
In June 1975, the owner of an LGBTQ+ bookstore hosted the District’s very first Pride celebration, a 2,000-person block party commemorating the 1969 Stonewall Riots and local Queer community. 50 years later, local businesses continue to host events celebrating the semi-centennial anniversary of Pride in the District and continue the “fight for equality, visibility and justice” worldwide, according to their website.
InterPride issued a travel advisory about safety concerns for transgender and nonbinary individuals traveling internationally after Trump issued an executive order on his first day in office, which stated that individuals must select male or female on their passports when entering the United States. In April, Kennedy Center officials canceled WorldPride events originally scheduled at the venue without providing organizers an explanation. The events were later relocated by the Capital Pride Alliance after President Trump replaced the Center’s board with members of his White House staff.
Liam Gideon, the founder and CEO of Unscripted by Guided Tours DC — a company that features tours personalized by the guides themselves — said they “preemptively designed” a tour showcasing LGBTQ+ history in the District in preparation for WorldPride. Gideon said tour guides drew from archives at the Washington Blade, the National Archives and the Library of Congress to create a walking tour highlighting LGBTQ+ landmarks from the past 50 years — including now-lost sites and personal stories from the community.
Gideon said the tour includes the sites of existing and former gay, transgender and lesbian bars, like the now-closed Mega lounge, JR’s Bar and Annie’s Paramount Steakhouse, the birthplace of the annual Drag Queen High Heel Race, which turned 37 years old in October. He said D.C. hosting WorldPride is “exciting,” as officials have increased the size of events and changed the route of the parade to host Pride on a greater scale.
“Even with all the scary things going on in the world right now, we look forward to it being a moment of celebration for everybody because Pride is always such a happy time and a happy event for all of us,” Gideon said. “We hope that’s the case this year, just on a higher magnitude.”
Elizabeth Mondragon and Carla Rountree, co-directors of the D.C. chapter of Opera on Tap, an international opera company that aims to make the genre more accessible, will be hosting a WorldPride night on May 22, featuring opera singers from the LGBTQ+ community at the Wonderland Ballroom in Columbia Heights. Rountree said the company is excited to “ramp” up their yearly pride celebration and showcase opera as a “welcoming community.”
Mondragon said in past Pride celebrations, the company has invited members of the LGBTQ+ community to perform songs from different genres, like musical theater. She said since D.C. is hosting WorldPride this year, the company decided to only feature opera music composed or written by LGBTQ+ composers, including Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Samuel Barber.
“With everything that’s going on in terms of silencing marginalized groups and especially the gay and trans community, having it here in D.C. is just extra pointed, so I’m glad we’re a part of that,” Mondragon said.
Rob Heim, the general manager and partner of Shaw’s Tavern on Florida Avenue, said the gastropub celebrates Pride every year and remains inclusive to Shaw’s diverse community, adding that the restaurant is expanding its celebrations in honor of WorldPride. Heim said the staff of WorldPride and Capital Pride are regulars at the tavern, attending drag dinners, so he contacted them to be included as part of the programming for the month because they are a gay-owned business and regularly feature performers from the LGBTQ+ community.
Heim said WorldPride is highlighting the Glitter Ball Drag Show, cabaret concert, Homme Brunch and live music night as a WorldPride Official Event Partner for the month. He said the tavern is opening earlier for brunch goers before the parade, hosting bottomless brunches every day for WorldPride, starting May 17, and is going “above and beyond” in decorating, while creating a comforting space for those who may not want to attend larger events from fear of larger crowds.
“I know a lot of people are maybe not thinking about coming, or they’re scared to come, but I think it’s more important now than ever to say that we’re here, we’re not going anywhere, and celebrate exactly who we are,” Heim said.
Heim said he saw Pride transform from a protest to a celebration, having grown up in the District and having attended Catholic University. He said he hid his identity as a gay person for many years, which made seeing the Capitol during his first Pride “crazy,” celebrating on Pennsylvania Ave., so close to the sites where political power is held.
“I just remember how important my first Pride was,” Heim said. “And as I always say to my husband and to everybody else, ‘It’s always somebody’s first pride, and they’re going to go through that experience.’”
Nubia Love-Jackson, a local drag queen, said this year marks her first WorldPride celebration, having performed at City Tap House Drag Brunch on the festival’s opening day. She said her primary participation in the celebration this year is supporting Sirène Noir Sidora Jackson — her drag daughter, a younger drag queen who seeks guidance from her drag mother — who was named Mx Capital World Pride 2025 at the yearly pageant crowning Mr, Mx and Miss Capital Pride.
“As a drag mother, I am passing on the torch and making sure she shines,” she said. “And she does a lot of that by herself, so don’t let me take any credit away from her.”
Love-Jackson said her drag identity is centered around her Blackness, celebrating the beauty and royalty of Black individuals by honoring the Nubian people and Janet Jackson through her name. She said her original name was not a “proper representation” of the community and said she was often cast in a tokenizing capacity.
“I just wanted to showcase Black excellence without being trashy. We can be beautiful. We can be classy,” she said. “And yes, I am a mess at times, but that’s just me in general.”
She said she is “proud” of members of the local drag community in the face of the Trump administration’s backlash toward drag shows as they “continue to protest” against anti-drag and anti-transgender rhetoric.
“At the end of the day, I can take Nubia off. A lot of them can’t take off who they are as a person,” she said. “So I’m glad that the ones who actually have a higher and stronger platform than I do are still doing their best to make sure that drag is one, not seen as a crime and two, we will never be silenced.”
