Twin Falls Pride

When was the first Pride festival in Twin Falls?

• The first Twin Falls Pride celebration was held in 2007, organized by the College of Southern Idaho Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA). The event was held in Frontier Park, behind the campus challenge course, gathering about 100 people with only six vendors. 

Why do you call it "Twin Falls Pride"?

• Over the years, the name of this event has changed, often reflecting the organizers behind it, such as "Magic Valley Pride Festival" or "Southern Idaho Pride Festival". Despite these name changes, the event's location has always remained the same. In 2023, with Southern Idaho Pride as the main facilitators for the event, we renamed the local Pride festival to "Twin Falls Pride", hopefully for the last time. This name better reflects the hub location of the community it serves, rather than the organization that plans it. We believe this change will bring lasting recognition and better represent our community to participants, sponsors, vendors, and beyond.

Who organizes the Twin Falls Pride Festival?

• The Twin Falls Pride Festival is organized by a Pride Planning Committee made up of local community members and facilitated by Southern Idaho Pride and Queer Cupboard. Learn more about Queer Cupboard here.

What is the Pride Planning Committee?

• Southern Idaho Pride created a Pride Planning Committee in 2024 to better manage the responsibilities of our organization's regular Pride Week events and our responsibilities to Twin Falls Pride. To learn more about the Pride Planning Committee, click here.

Do I need to purchase tickets to attend the Twin Falls Pride Festival?

• No! Twin Falls Pride Festival is open to the public and is completely free to attend.

What is the Twin Falls Pride Parade?

•  Twin Falls Pride Parade took place on Main Street in Twin Falls and was followed by a block party for attendees to enjoy local musicians, eat good food, and hang out.

• The Twin Falls Pride Parade started in 2021 by local business owner, Heidi Heil of Rock Creek Celebration Center and Serenity Funeral Chapel. Southern Idaho Pride took on the parade in 2024. Our first year was a learning curve, as we've never done something like this before, but the Pride Planning Committee learning quickly and we hope to continue facilitating an event like this again in the future.

Why was the Twin Falls Pride Parade turned into a rally in 2025?

• 2025 turned out to be a difficult year to gather interested parties to register as participants in the original parade plans. Coupled with community feedback concerns about safety and being mindful of the cost to the City of Twin Falls to aid this event, the Pride Planning Committee reimagined the parade as a rally in the Twin Falls City Park. There are ongoing talks about whether the Pride Planning Committee would like to do this in lieu of a parade in the future.

When is the Twin Falls Pride Festival and Parade?

• Twin Falls Pride Festival is held annually on the second weekend in June in Twin Falls Idaho. This is subject to change based on the Twin Falls Parks and Recreation schedule, as they are the entity that allows us to use Twin Falls City Park for the festival.

• Twin Falls Pride Parade is held the day before the festival on Main Street in Twin Falls Idaho, followed by a block party. This is also subject to change based on the Twin Falls City schedule, as they are the entity that allows us to use Main Street for the parade and help us coordinate street blockades.

Why does Southern Idaho Pride organize Twin Falls Pride Festival?

• Twin Falls Pride Festival is the largest fundraising event of the year for Southern Idaho Pride. The organization uses the funds from vendor and sponsor registrations to create the event. We use remaining funds to pay for our other programs and events in our annual cycle. This has been hard work as we're usually left with less than 30% of what we fundraise after the festival is over. We are actively fundraising in other ways as to not depend solely on this event to form our annual budget.

Why does Southern Idaho Pride ask performers to apply to perform at the Twin Falls Pride Festival?

• Southern Idaho Pride no longer uses an "invite only" style to book performers for the festival. We recognized the harm this was doing to the local drag community to invite some performers and not others. We switched to an application style to level the playing field. By doing an open application it has widened the pool of performers, and thus widened the diversity of performances for the festival. We have found performers we haven't been aware of, up-and-coming performers, and out-of-town performers with this new method. All final applicants are booked with the help of local performers.

• We encourage all performers to apply to perform at the Twin Falls Pride Festival. If a performer hasn't applied we are not booking them for the festival to be fair to our applicants.