Shelby Pride Festival 2026

November 7, 3:00-7:00 p.m.

Location: Bobby Bell Pavilion, 126 W Marion St, Shelby, NC 28150

Shelby Pride Leadership is thrilled to announce this year's Pride Festival! Your Festival Planning Committee is anticipating several nonprofits, resources, businesses, food trucks, queer karaoke, Coming Out Stories, a live drag show, and a Kids-Friendly Corner with activities! The Shelby Pride Festival is a family-friendly, free event open to all peaceful folks of Cleveland County and the surrounding areas (and we love having out-of-town guests, too!).

Call for vendors 2026: Now Live

Click Here to apply!

Festival FAQS

When and where is the festival? The Shelby Pride Festival is Saturday, November 7, from 3:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at the Bobby Bell Pavilion at 126 W. Marion Street, Shelby, NC 28150.
Is Pride inclusive of all ages? Yes! Shelby Pride Festival is for all ages and peaceful folks.
Do we have to pay to attend the festival? Nope, the festival is free for everyone! We will have vendors with lovely wares, as well as a live drag performance, so we encourage folks to bring cash and/or digital payments for wares, tips, and food.
How do I get a booth at the festival? You can submit an application for a booth using our Call for Vendors form here. Early Bird Registration ends on July 31, 2026; the final day to apply is August 31, 2026. Decision emails will be sent out by September 7, 2026.
How do I sponsor the festival? You can become a sponsor for Shelby Pride by choosing one of the following tiers:
- - Our Day Tier ($50.00) - named in honor of the first Pride march in NC, held in 1981. Includes logo on all festival banners, first selection booth placement or two booth spaces, and 5x social media features.
  - Paula Murray Tier ($100.00) - Named in honor of Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray, transgender civil rights writer and lawyer from NC. Includes a shared banner spot and 1x social media feature.
  - Mandy Carter Tier ($250.00) - Named in honor of Mandy Carter, co-founder of SONG and civil rights leader in NC. Includes featured logo on festival map, premium booth placement, and 3x social media features.
  - Stonewall Tier ($500.00) - Named in honor of the first Pride. Includes logo on all festival banners, first selection booth placement of 2 booth spaces, and 5x social media features.
  - Want to give a larger donation? Contact Leadership for details at festival@shelbypride.org.
When are vendor/sponsorship payments due for the festival? Festival payments can be made to Shelby Pride on Paypal and are due by October 7, 2026.
How can I pay my vendor/sponsorship payments for the festival? All vendor and sponsorship payments can be made via PayPal under Shelby Pride (click link to visit).
What if I still have questions? You can reach out to the Festival Planning Committee with direct questions at festival@shelbypride.org!
Where can I park? There's plenty of free parking available in Uptown Shelby! We recommend the free parking alongside the Bobby Bell Pavilion and other nearby streets. There's also free parking along S. Morgan Street and E. Graham Street! Our local indie bookstore, Box Turtle Books, has a great visual aid for local, free parking you can view on Instagram here.
Can I bring my pet to the festival? Yes, as long as they are leashed (or contained/holding at all times if you have a reptilian pet) at all times!
Will tip money (cash) be available at the Shelby Pride tent again? Yes! We will have cash for tipping queens available at the Shelby Pride tent.
What accessibility features are available at the festival? All entrances to the festival are wheelchair accessible, and the Shelby Pride main tent will have printed and digital versions of Festival Agendas available. With the festival being a fairly busy event, we encourage anyone who may feel overstimulated to bring/wear noise-cancelling devices. We are a mask-friendly event, too!
Will there be bathroom facilities? Yes! There are bathrooms at the Pavilion that we encourage all visitors to utilize.
Why is the festival at the Bobby Bell Pavilion this year and not the Uptown Square? Shelby Pride has noticed a consistent increase in festival visitors; as such, we made the decision to move our location to the pavilion in order to utilize their built-in restrooms and make our festival even more accessible to all.
What about protestors? We are aware that our festival often brings out a few protestors. We will have Volunteer Staff on hand throughout the festival identifiable with t-shirts and lanyards to keep an eye out for any disturbances; we encourage anyone who sees anything unusual or feels uncomfortable to find one of our Volunteer Staff members or visit the Shelby Pride Festival tent to speak to a member there. Since our festival is on private property, protestors cannot enter the festival but must remain on public property (i.e., sidewalks). We encourage our visitors not to engage with them; protestors thrive on conflict and agitation to justify their presence. We don't want to feed the trolls! Our top priority is giving everyone a safe, family-friendly day.

Never been to a drag show? Let us Share a Bit what to expect!

Drag Shows are fun presentations of characters in drag (i.e., exaggerated hair, makeup, outfits, etc.) that lip-sync and dance to popular songs! Grab those dollar bills - audience members are encouraged to clap, snap, yell encouragement, and tip your queens and kings! Just remember, no touching without consent. We hope you're as excited for this year's performance as we are! We will be releasing bios soon of our lovely performers.

Pictured here is local Shelby queen Seraph Van Dank from Shelby Pride Festival 2025.

Logo Reveal: Coming soon!

We are having a local queer artist from Shelby, NC, create our logo for the festival. We can't wait to show you! She's worked incredibly hard, and we feel her vision sets up the perfect theme for our festival this year:

Small Town, Big Pride!

We know in these uncertain times, there's power in community. This theme is meant to remind us that no matter what happens, together we are stronger. Together we will survive, just like our queer elders before us.

History of Pride in Shelby

Shelby Pride is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to serving the LGBTQIA+ community of Cleveland County by creating safe social spaces, providing education on LGBTQIA+ issues, and advocating for equality. We embrace queerness as an intersectional, celebratory aspect of humanity. This is a short history of Shelby Pride in Shelby, NC, but we always like to remind folks that we honor the undocumented lives of so many of our past and present community members. Their lived existence is an act of resistance, recorded or not.

Similar to many small, rural towns across North Carolina, Shelby has struggled with a history of violence and isolation when it comes to queer folks. Shelby Pride's creation itself is a testament to the ever-prevailing spirit of rural queer folks across Appalachia, Western North Carolina, and the greater Bible Belt of the South. Prior to a formal organization, the first #ShelbyLovesPride Picnic held at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer was on Friday, June 27, 2014, which led to the Shelby Pride chapter being later created by local residents and former presidents Paul Ditz and continued by Galaxy Linberger of Shelby, NC, in 2016. The onset of Covid-19 saw Shelby Pride on hiatus until 2022, when, at a Queer Poetry Reading Event at the Eugenia H. Memorial Library led by Grace Boston, Dale Guffey volunteered to lead an interest meeting to revive Shelby Pride. Shelby Pride was reborn, and Jimmy Carpenter Designs crafted us our lovely current logo.

The following year, Shelby Pride hosted its first Pride Festival in Uptown Shelby, a historic event for the town's queer folks that celebrated diversity and community. We have been able to host the Shelby Pride Festival each year, which you can read through our own archives or these lovely articles from our local Shelby Star at the links below. (Special shoutout to local journalist Becca Sites for her work on reporting on each festival over the years.)

Thank you for taking time to read through our history! This group strives to build and sustain community for local queer folks; we are so happy you're here. Interested in seeing what our group does? You can visit our Event Archive page created by Communications Coordinator Marianne Leudeman, whose tireless work is one of Cleveland County's first queer archives dedicated to local LGBTQIA+ events. You can also request to join our private Facebook group, Shelby Pride Members, to begin building community with your local queers and allies. Lastly, you can always subscribe to our email list here to keep up with all things Shelby Pride!

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