Following the disbanding of Tucson Pride in January, local organizers and Tucson venues are stepping up to create new, inclusive spaces and events to celebrate the city’s LGBTQ community.
Hotel Congress, 311 E Congress St., will host Tucson’s Loud and Proud Queer Festival starting at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 1, featuring circus and drag performances, dancing and local vendors.
The event has been coordinated by community organizers who wanted to create a space for celebration in the absence of Tucson Pride, said Chris Monzon, director of entertainment and operations for Hotel Congress.
“It's been really beautiful that these community organizers, just people who are friends, have put together a committee and created an event,” he said. “Everyone who's involved with this event, they are all just people in the community, queer members of the community, who are just trying to help contribute to something overall.”
Mattie Klass, one of the co-organizers of the event, said it stemmed from a strong desire for something to replace the space lost with Tucson Pride. Organizers of the annual Tucson Pride festival cancelled the 2026 event, which was to take place Feb. 21, and dissolved the organization's board in January.
The Fun Stuff booth at the 46th annual Tucson pride festival sells an array of LGBTQIA+ flags at Georges DeMeester Outdoor Performance Center in Reid Park, 800 S. Concert Place, Tucson, Ariz., Sept. 30, 2023.
“It was really just a ragtag team of volunteers, two of whom had some pretty choice access to some cool space — and the notoriety to get it — that made this possible,” Klass said. “One person who really spearheaded this from the get go and then handed it off immediately to the queer community was Alexis Walters. He is a promoter and DJ that's pretty well known in Tucson, and he had a connection with Hotel Congress.”
“We came to the consensus that it would be a shame if there was no event, because for people in the community, pride isn't just an organization,” Monzon said. “Speaking on a personal note, it was incredibly important for this whole thing to happen and exist.”
“Especially right now," said Klass, "when it's just hard to exist as an LGBTQ community member and getting increasingly harder to do so, it's incredibly important that we have spaces where we can play, dance, and be our unbridled, unrestricted selves with each other."
The event costs $19 to attend, and Monzon said the entire property will be jam packed with talented performers.
“Our club stage, our plaza stage, and our lobby area are all going to be a part of the event,” he said. “There's going to be a variety of DJs, there's going to be a variety of drag performances, there's going to be dancing.”
Attendees can also expect to see Circus Sanctuary members performing daring aerial stunts throughout the night.
“We're going to have some vendors outside as well,” Monzon said. “I believe that there's some clothing, some jewelry.”
So far, Monzon said there seems to be a large community interest in the event, with over 150 pre-sale tickets already purchased.
“For a new event, that's very indicative of pretty strong attendance,” he said. “There's so many people here who just want a place to go and just want a place to celebrate.”
BreakOut Studios events
BreakOut Studios is also celebrating Pride this weekend with free classes and a Pride Disco Party.
Since moving into their new space at 5311 E Speedway in early January, owner Todd Wilson said he has been looking for opportunities to host large-scale dance parties for the Tucson community.
“We already had planned on creating these events, but didn’t really know when we wanted to start and what the theme would be,’ he said. “And then we saw that pride had been canceled and the committee had been dissolved, and so we wanted to make that the theme of our first event.”
But it goes beyond that, Wilson said.
“We have a very diverse population at BreakOut, many lovely people that identify in different ways, so we wanted to celebrate them in pride,” he said.
BreakOut Studios will be hosting free classes during the day, Saturday Feb. 28, 2026.
The studio will offer free classes from 8 a.m. until about 2 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 28.
“We’re just doing a big sampling of our classes,” he said. "We'll have some ballet, some jazz, some dance cardio, we'll have some fitness types of classes.”
They will also offer classes with their brand new TRX suspension training system.
“Most of our classes are all levels,” Wilson said. “A lot of our classes are meant for folks who are trying out dance for the first time, or returning to movement.”
BreakOut Studios is celebrating Pride this weekend with a disco party, free dance classes, and Pride t-shirts.
The main event of the weekend, though, is their dry disco party, which will be held Sunday, March 1, from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m.
A ticket costs $15, and 25% of the proceeds will go to support Reveille Men's Chorus, a local gay men's chorus.
“We'll have one room, sort of like a lounge, with house music, and one will be a more upbeat, fun, disco party,” Wilson said. “It's just a place for people to go and celebrate Pride, and enjoy community.”
Wilson said he is glad his studio can help fill the void left by Tucson Pride, and provide a space for community connection.
“There's been some great organizations popping up to support and to do different things. We're one of many activities, so we know that we're a part of a bigger picture,” he said.
Hotel Congress' Monzon put it this way: “Just because Tucson Pride doesn't exist, doesn't mean that pride doesn't exist in Tucson.”
