The Long Beach Pride Parade and a last-minute community event at Bixby Park went off without a hitch on Sunday, May 17, despite the unexpected cancellation of the associated two-day festival.
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The festival, which is organized and funded by the nonprofit Long Beach Pride, was canceled on Friday evening, May 15, shortly before the weekend’s events were set to kick off with Teen Pride that night. The festival was scheduled to take place both Saturday and Sunday.
Though Long Beach Pride did not provide a reason for the hasty cancellation of the event in its Friday announcement, the city issued its own statement, saying the nonprofit had failed to secure safety permits, despite numerous efforts from city staff to help.
“(W)e continued working with Long Beach Pride into Friday, May 15, to assist the organization in obtaining the permits necessary to safely hold the festival at its originally proposed location,” city spokesperson Kevin Lee said in a Monday, May 18, statement, “with the expectation that the remaining required documentation would be provided, which, in the end, they were not and therefore permits were not issued.”
Long Beach Pride President Tonya Martin, who announced the festival’s cancellation on the nonprofit’s website and via social media on Friday, has not directly addressed the permitting concerns. Multiple attempts to reach Martin for an interview since Friday, May 15, including emails and phone calls, had not been returned, as of Monday evening.
But in a Friday evening video posted on Long Beach Pride’s website, she seemed to shift the blame to the city.
“Just remember, this is more of an emotional day for me because I’ve been with the organization for many years. I’ve seen it grow and I’ve seen the challenges that we’ve had throughout the years with the city, but we came together and worked with them,” Martin said. “This time we asked for help again, early in the year, and it never was given. So to do this to us, is to do this to all of us.”
In a statement on Saturday, Martin doubled down.
“The full truth will come out, and we will continue to be transparent with our community,” she said. “Thank you to everyone who called, shared, showed up and stood with Pride.”
Though the Pride Parade has also been historically organized and hosted by the nonprofit, Long Beach took responsibility for that event in 2024. Long Beach Pride, which has been struggling financially for several years, asked the city for help and the city has obliged ever since.
For the first two years, Long Beach paid for the parade through one-time dollars from the city budget. As part of the 2026 fiscal year budget, though, the City Council approved $50,000 worth of ongoing structural funding for the event to ensure it continues in the future. The Port of Long Beach also supported this year’s parade with $50,000.
For that reason, the 2026 Pride Parade went on as usual on Sunday.
Though Long Beach has yet to determine formal attendance numbers for the parade, the city said there was a bigger turnout this year.
“City staff and parade organizers reported a noticeable increase in turnout compared to last year,” Lee said. “The energy along the parade route was especially strong, with larger and more vibrant crowds lining the streets throughout downtown during this year’s celebration, as well as much higher activation than usual on the Broadway corridor.”
Long Beach also quickly organized an accompanying event at the Bixby Park bandshell for the community on Sunday, which featured live music and a free drag show hosted by local performer Jewels Long Beach. Hundreds of people attended that event, the city said.
Putting together the event on such short notice, Lee said, was a team effort among Mayor Rex Richardson, 2nd District Councilmember Cindy Allen, Visit Long Beach, city and Los Angeles County leadership, Jewels of Long Beach and the community.
“People showed up ready to uplift the LGBTQ+ community and celebrate the spirit of Pride. The party featured music, dancing and a dazzling drag show. Overall, a strong sense of community, joy and pride made the day a memorable success,” Lee said. “The city is proud to have made this event possible this year, and the feedback from those who attended has been overwhelmingly positive.”
The Pride Festival’s cancellation, meanwhile, came as a shock, not just to attendees, but also to the many vendors and performers slated to participate in the event over the weekend, especially since the festival grounds were set up by Friday.
“Event setup activities began on the grounds without proper permits,” Lee said, “which prompted the cease-and-desist letter on Friday, May 15.”
One vendor, Erica Loring, was already on her way to Long Beach from San Diego to participate in the Pride Festival for the first time when she found out that the event had been canceled.
Loring is the founder of Shecanter, a small San Diego business that sells uterus-shaped decanters, mugs and other items.
“Typically for these events, you pay a good bit of money to be there,” Loring said in a Monday interview. “As a vendor, I paid $670 — and this is public information, you can find it on the website — plus $140 for permits from the city.”
While Long Beach itself has no authority to refund vendors for participation fees paid directly to Long Beach Pride, Lee said, it can and will refund vendors what they paid for city permits to participate in the festival.
“The city has the authority and ability to issue a full refund to any business for payment received related to them obtaining a special business license and other necessary Health permits to be a part of the festival,” Lee said, “and that’s what we are doing.”
Loring, meanwhile, said she didn’t receive any notice about the festival’s cancellation from Pride itself. Rather, she got a text from a friend letting her know about the news.
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“I was like, ‘What?’ So we had to pull over and figure out what the heck was going on,” she said. “I had emailed the event organization a couple of days in advance a couple of times to ask some clarifying questions, and I got no response.”
She tried to email back to figure out what was going on around 8 p.m. Friday, but did not get a response from organizers, Loring said.
“The Pride organization never notified us,” she said. “And then Saturday was our day to move in, and they emailed us a half an hour after we were due at the location. We got emailed that it would be canceled and that we might have a potential for smaller Pride festivities on Sunday, and to stay tuned. From then, I didn’t hear anything. That was just like a blanketed email to all the vendors.”
Loring, however, said she felt it was a bit of a red flag when she got almost no information about the setup for vendors. Usually, when events of this scale are planned in advance, vendors get large packets, and copies of contracts and the location of the vendor’s booth well ahead of time to be able to prepare, she said. Vendors for the festival did not get any of that this year, she said.
“We got (a) booth location the day of, which they knew was already canceled. I had my red flags when I saw there were only 13 booths. That’s smaller than a farmer’s market, so that was already concerning,” Loring said. “To not get any emails or any communication was just kind of a slap to the face to vendors, and I don’t foresee anyone returning for Long Beach Pride if it’s run by the Pride organization.”
Loring, though, also said the city has been helpful since the Pride Festival’s cancellation was announced. The city called Loring personally on Saturday, she said, to offer her a $140 refund for the city permits she’d paid for, and to let her know officials would set aside a space for her business at the Bixby Park event and offered her help setting up if she wanted it.
“I was in text communication, call communication, email communication with the city, even though I know they were super, super busy trying to figure everything out and fix this,” Loring said. “It just kind of went to show me, if the city can personally, one-on-one call me, I think the Pride organization could have simply hit reply all or sent an email or try to do anything to help any of us.”
After all that, Loring agreed to set up her booth at Bixby Park. She was near the corner of Ocean Boulevard and Cherry Avenue. She really enjoyed the experience, Loring said.
“I would go back again. The parade was fantastic and there were a lot of people at Bixby Park,” she said. “A lot of people had seen my videos, they had come up, they introduced themselves, they supported. I made a good amount of money just from the little Pride time that I was at, so it was really nice. I very much enjoyed it.”
But as for whether she’d participate in a Pride Festival organized by the Long Beach Pride organization next year, Loring said she’s not so sure.
“I think that no one in leadership from the Pride organization should be in charge,” she said. “I think they need to wipe the slate clean. They need to start over. No one has faith in them. There’s really no coming back from something like this.”
Loring also said some people have blamed the city for not simply allowing the Pride Festival to continue despite the nonprofit’s apparent failures to ensure proper security measures and permits at the venue.
“A lot of people are placing blame on the city and saying they should have just let them open up Pride, but as a businessperson, and knowing how insurance works and safety, especially for Pride, (which) faces a greater risk of harm, sadly, because there are a lot of people who are very passionately against it,” Loring said, “having safety measures in place is super important. If something were to go wrong, and it were to be found out that (the city) just gave them a pass to open up without the proper safety and paperwork submitted, that lawsuit would have been 10,000 times worse.”
Long Beach Pride released a statement on Monday afternoon, apologizing and sharing its timeline of events from its perspective.
“Long Beach Pride extends its sincere apologies to the community, vendors, performers, sponsors, volunteers, ticket holders, and partners,” the statement said. “We also reiterate our dedication to transparency during this difficult moment.”
The organization said it would collaborate with ticketing partners, vendors, sponsors, performers and community partners to resolve the financial and logistical impacts of this cancellation.
It also requested a formal debrief with the city to fully understand what occurred and help prevent similar issues in the future.
“Our priority now is to begin early planning for next year so that our community never has to experience a disruption like this again,” the statement said. “We remain dedicated to our mission and look forward to serving the Long Beach community with renewed vigor and service.”
Prices for the festival ranged from $40 for a one-day general admission ticket to $150 for one-day VIP admission, according to the event’s website.
There is also still looming uncertainty regarding the plans for next year’s Pride Festival, and whether the nonprofit plans to make any operational changes to ensure a successful event in 2027.
Long Beach, for its part, will review the application for the 2027 Long Beach Pride Festival as it “would with any special events application,” Lee said, if they receive one from the nonprofit.
As for Loring, the 2027 Pride Festival is a definite no-go.
“We definitely have lost faith in the organizers of Pride. I don’t think there’s any way you can come back from this,” she said. “I would not do the festival, but I would come back for the parade. That was fun.”