CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) — After a successful event in September, Charlottesville Pride will be bringing its annual festival back to the Ting Pavilion this year, on Sept. 26.

Last year’s festival drew at least 5,500 people, at least 500-1,000 more than 2024’s edition, as well as nearly 90 vendor booths, the most in the event’s history.

“We’re seeing really great year-over-year growth,” Nick Hutchins, President of Charlottesville Pride, told Cville Right Now. “I attribute that to the sort of increased awareness about the festival, some of the work that we’re doing as an organization to reach out to more and more local businesses and organizations and working with some of the other pride organizations around Virginia.”

This year’s festival, which was first held by Charlottesville Pride in 2012, will be held at the Ting Pavilion for the third year.

“This event has become one of the highlights of our fall calendar,” Ting Pavilion general manager Jonathan Drolshagen said in a release, “and we look forward to working with the Cville Pride team to make 2026 another memorable celebration for the entire community.”

The appreciation is mutual between the festival and its hosts. Hutchins said one of the great things about hosting the festival at the pavilion has allowed the festival to expand its footprint as Charlottesville Pride has continued to grow awareness.

“Our host are really just fantastic,” Hutchins said of the team at Ting Pavilion. “They essentially just give us a blank slate and let us figure out how we want it to look and have just such wonderful built-in capacity for event hosting and understanding the nature of an event this size.”

Hutchins also said the pavilion’s location on the Downtown Mall is a “marquee space” that people would think of when they imagine an event in Downtown Charlottesville. He said the location is great for both Charlottesville Pride and its community.

“It doesn’t feel like we’re going on some sort of side street or far away place, but that we’re just right there in the middle,” Hutchins said. “And I think that expands our ability to reach more people.”

Charlottesville Pride will open its application process for booths for both vendors and organizations, musicians, drag performers and volunteers on May 1. Applications for vendors and organizations as well as entertainment will be open for about six weeks, while applications for volunteers will be ongoing in the months leading up to the festival.

With the festival’s expanded footprint, Hutchins said Charlottesville Pride was able to accommodate 90 of the 125 applications for booths last year, a stark contrast to prior years when the organization was rejecting nearly half of the applications it received.

Still, Hutchins said they will be prioritizing vendors and organizations who have a stated interest in the LGBTQ+ community as well as local small businesses, vendors and organizations.

“It’s one of ethos here that we really want to make sure we’re prioritizing this community, be it the LGBTQ+ community or just the Charlottesville community,” Hutchins said.

Those looking to stay up to date with the festival can do so through Charlottesville Pride’s website and Instagram account.

“It’s still pretty early days,” Hutchins said, “so we’ll have a lot more announcements and things to say about the entertainers and all of that kind of stuff over the coming months.”