We're taking over the city!

Traditionally Northern Pride has been held on the outskirts of the city, having taken place at both Exhibition Park and the Town Moor in previous years.

But we've unveiled ambitious plans for 2024, which will make the event even more inclusive than ever before. And in 2025 we continue on that misson!

Pride in the City was announced, moving the annual festival into a number of locations across Newcastle city centre over the weekend of 19-20 July.

Under the theme “unapologetically visible” the aim now is to bring around 80,000 people to Newcastle during the Pride weekend, by bringing all the festival favourites right into the heart of the city.

Our mission is clear. We’re using our festival to highlight the vibrant and beautiful queer community, the valuable impact they have on society and the richness of their talents, from makers and creators, to performers and activists.

We've partnered up with some of the best spaces and places across the city!

Our Official Venues

Coming soon... we'll share more information on each area and a full list of participating venues!

Sign up to our Pride Mail and we'll send you everything you need to know, direct to your inbox as soon as it's released.

Head to www.northern-pride.com/quicklinks for all the links you need.

There are many reasons why we’ve moved from the Town Moor and into the city for 2024’s Festival and why we are continuing with this model in 2025.

We’ve been incredibly grateful to the Freemen of Newcastle upon Tyne for being our land partner for the best part of a decade and they continue to support Northern Pride as we make this transition.

In 2023, many of you would have seen the devastating impact that the weather had on the festival, and how it impacted many attendees, volunteers, traders and contracted staff.

Ensuring that access and safety is a priority for Northern Pride, requires us to consider if a grassed site is the best location for the event. There are other options that we can consider for future events to improve access, so a return to the Moor is not entirely impossible. But for 2024 we are keeping our focus on ensuring that a Pride can happen this year in a way that everyone can enjoy while we assess plans for future events.

Pride in the City in 2024, welcomed record numbers to this year’s festival across Newcastle city centre, with over 82,000 people engaging with the joy of pride, supporting a positive economic impact of c £4m.

The economic impact and satisfaction survey confirmed that for a third of attendees, this was their first experience of pride. 75% of participants identified as LGBTQIA+, with 73% of attendees visiting from outside of Newcastle city centre postcodes. Of those in attendance who had experienced pride before, 70% said it was ‘better than previous years’, with 90% confirming they would return next year. Overall perception scores were positive, with most scoring 8+ out of 10.

Moving to the city and partnering with venues who already have infrastructure and services required to make the event a success, does allow us to deliver a Pride without the need to hire large amounts of infrastructure and equipment that is required to build a festival site.

With this, we’ll be able to ensure we can stay true to our charitable focuses. These include ensuring that all artists, creatives, performers and service providers are remunerated for their work. We’re able to commission new works of performing arts, audio and visual work, that will help us demonstrate what ‘unapologetically visible’ means in 2024 and beyond.

We’ll also be in a position to ensure that there is still access to free content across many of the festival zones, with only the Arena requiring a paid ticket. Ensuring free access to vital services and community outreach programs is a key focus for Northern Pride.

We appreciate that moving to Central Park, Times Square will raise concerns about capacity and attendance.

There is a limit to capacity and once capacity is reached, tickets will be sold out.

Attendance across the festival always includes those that are in our community zones, and other areas not just in front of the main stage.

We believe that Central Park is an ideal location and brings the live entertainment into the heart of the LGBTQIA+ scene for the first time in almost 10 years.

If the arena is sold out, we know that the LGBTQIA+ venues, our official venues and participating venues will have a wide range of entertainment and activities that will cater for everyone, providing choice and the ability to personalise your pride experience.

When we looked at our official venues, we looked for several key things, including available services, access and the ability for these venues to support the LGBTQIA+ community.

We’ve also made sure that some of the venues are in close proximity to each other.

Our official community zones will all open at 12 on Saturday, and will remain open until 5pm.

The Arena will have different start and end times providing plenty time to explore the city and grab a bite to eat! Friday doors will open 5pm and entertainment will end 11pm. With Saturday running from 2pm until 11pm. Sunday will see the arena also open at 2pm but will close at 9pm so that the Candlelit Vigil can take place. The Vigil will be free to attend, with non-ticket holders welcome to join us from 9pm.

We have also got some further plans to help getting around the city, especially for those travelling to join us. Watch this space.

To find out where everything is, either download our mobile app, or head to our Pride in the City webpage, for all links visit www.northern-pride.com/quicklinks

The March is one of the most important parts of the Northern Pride Festival and this year we expect it to continue to be one of the highlights for those coming to the city come rain or shine!

As always, the March will start on Ceremonial Way at Newcastle Civic Centre. The route will be shared nearer the time, but we’re pleased to share that the March will end back at the Civic Centre where our Health and Wellbeing Zone will be open, and across the road at Northern Stage, our Curious Arts Stage.

So plenty to do straight after you’ve finished the March!

For all our Official Venues, we’ve ensured that the venues are step free, fully accessible and have the required access services needed. We’ll be sharing more information on our website very soon with detailed information on what services are at each venue including any participating venues that sign up to join Pride in the City.

A new Accessibility Page will soon be included on the website, which will share more information, including where other services are available in the city, including changing places.