Kalamazoo Pride 2026: 'I love what I'm doing. I hate that I have to do it.'
News Channel 3 | Abigail Taylor
Published June 5, 2026
KALAMAZOO, Mich. — Hundreds of people are expected to be at Arcadia Creek Festival Place in downtown Kalamazoo this weekend for Pride 2026.
The opening night on Friday was wet and gray, but still brought out a large crowd of many colors.
Kalamazoo Pride is one of the city’s biggest annual events and the largest fundraising events for OutFront Kalamazoo.
OutFront is southwest Michigan's largest non-profit LGBTQ+ resource center.
The festival comes at the beginning of Pride Month, in June, as similar events take place across the U.S.
Along with it being a celebration, many attendees also describe Pride as being part of an ongoing fight for basic rights.
Some folks also told News Channel 3 that the sense of acceptance is as important as the fun at Pride.
A volunteer at a booth sponsored by "Free Mom Hugs," Aaron Smith, said he is there to offer kindness to people who may not receive it from their own family.
“I’ve had people hug me and they just burst into tears because they’re like, my father never hugged me or my mother never, I haven’t spoken to my mother in years,” Smith said.
“So it’s a simple thing, just a simple hug, but it can be so important for someone who’s never had that.”
Smith said that his own child struggled when coming out, despite being raised in what he described as a supportive home.
“My own child, when they came out to me, was despondent, and we had raised them to believe that, you know, this is what we feel... Gay or trans or anything, it’s no big deal," Smith told News Channel 3.
Organizers and advocates also point to the long history behind Kalamazoo Pride 2026.
Around 1970, a Western student founded what has been documented as the city’s first gay rights group, according to public records at the University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library, titled Greg Kamm Papers.
Related to the history of gay rights in the United States, one Kalamazoo Pride attendee and advocate shared a personal story about growing up with two mothers.
David Green Quincy, told News Channel 3 about being raised in Kalamazoo in the mid 1900s, and how he was even in fear of being found out as the child of a same-sex couple.
“My classmates still had friends. I never did, because I was afraid that if word ever got out, I would never hear the end of it,” he said. “I thought I was the only one in society in this whole planet who had same-sex parents.”
His biological mother died in 1985, more than a quarter century before Obergefell v. Hodges, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to make same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states, in 2015.
“She paved the way for other LGBTQ folks to come out of the closet, so to speak," And I’ve been very proud of her for stepping forward.”
OutFront Kalamazoo, the nonprofit that hosts Pride, announced on Friday having served more than 7,000 community members in 2025, through community support.
OutFront offers free mental health programs, youth housing and other forms of personal advocacy.
Kalamazoo Pride entry is by donation, and organizers say no one is turned away.
Many describe Kalamazoo's LGBTQ+ community as welcoming year-round, but in June, it gets a lot louder and prouder.