NJ Pride Festival Pushed Back From October To Next June

ASBURY PARK, NJ – The producers of the state’s largest Pride celebration have decided to postpone its 30th annual event from October of this year to next June.

According to a post on their Facebook page, event organizers Jersey Pride based their decision on a potential surge in cases this fall due to the delta variant of COVID-19 plus not enough fully vaccinated people and the possibility of being a potential super-spreader event.

In addition, the event was seeing more and more vendors drop out of the event.

"We have not been planning in a vacuum. It was already clear that we were not going to be able to host the blow-out 30th-year event that an anniversary year warranted and that we should target a modest one this fall,” Laura Pople, Jersey Pride President, said in a statement.

“We had also made a determination that we would follow the lead of outdoor event organizers like Live Nation and mandate vaccinations or negative COVID tests for any attendees. Even with these precautions, however, it was clear that a critical mass of participants was withdrawing from (or at least questioning) participation in Pride."

Pople called the decision to postpone the event “heartbreaking” and understood people’s frustration. Still, organizers felt that they couldn’t produce an event that would keep people as safe as possible.

"We reached the conclusion that we needed to look critically at whether we could safely hold the event this year. We explored the viability and safety of several different scenarios before concluding that we needed to cancel and refocus our energy on producing NJ's 30th LGBTQ+ Pride Celebration in June 2022,” Pople said.