Asheville gets June Pride festival again with debut of AVL Stonewall Fest

AVL Stonewall Fest brought a June Pride celebration back to Asheville for the first time in decades, turning downtown into a three-day weekend of drag, DJs, dance parties and Stonewall history. The free main festival was set for Saturday, June 27, at Asheville Yards, 75 Coxe Ave., with the full event running June 26-28 and additional gatherings at The Radical Hotel and O.Henry’s.

Organizer Butch Thompson created the festival after years of requests from people who wanted a Pride celebration in June instead of waiting for Blue Ridge Pride’s September event. June is tied to the Stonewall uprising, which began after a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village in June 1969, and to New York’s first Pride march on June 28, 1970, which drew thousands on the uprising’s first anniversary.

Blue Ridge Pride has served the Asheville-area LGBTQ+ community since 2009 and has traditionally held its annual festival in September. Before that, Asheville’s only June Pride festivals came in 1992 and 1998, when North Carolina Pride was hosted in the city.

North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein’s 2026 Pride Month proclamation tied Pride Month to Stonewall and said policies to protect and strengthen LGBTQ rights are needed to keep people safe. The proclamation also cited GLAAD’s tracking of 1,042 anti-LGBTQ incidents in 47 states and the District of Columbia in 2025, a 5 percent increase from 2024. The U.S. Department of Education said Title IX prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally funded education programs and activities.

The weekend’s lineup also included a Stonewall Market with more than 40 local vendors and artists, along with live entertainment, drag performances, food, DJs and other vendors. Thompson also planned a banner where attendees could write messages about Stonewall and a reading of a Stonewall manifesto.