On January 28, 2026, Qnotes reported that the SC Upstate Pride Celebration would no longer be held in Spartanburg, ending a tradition that started in 2009 when the first event was held in cooperation with Spartanburg’s Unitarian Universalist Church (UUCS). A crowd of about 500 people attended the initial event.
The following year, the Hub City’s mayor at the time, the late Junie White, signed a proclamation designating LGBT Pride Day in the city.
Attendance last year was somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 people at the celebration held in Barnet Park.
According to an announcement from the Upstate Pride SC Board of Directors, the 2026 Pride celebration – now called “Colors of Pride” – would be moved to the larger city of Greenville. The board cited dwindling attendance, difficulty in securing volunteers for the event, and the growing appeal of Greenville’s Upstate Black Pride Festival.
In response to the decision, The Spartanburg Pride Coalition was established as a cooperative partnership among local LGBTQ+-supportive organizations.
There are an estimated 12,000 LGBTQ+ residents in Spartanburg County, according to the 2025 “Understanding LGBTQ+ Needs in Spartanburg County: An Updated Assessment,” a project funded in part by the LGBT Fund of Spartanburg, a component fund of The Spartanburg County Foundation, founded in 2016. The group was formed to provide a celebratory event for that population.
Anne Gardner, assistant minister at UUCS and Vice President of the Board of the Coalition, said upon hearing of the move, “People [in the Spartanburg, Union and Cherokee counties area] were frustrated, angry and hurt.”
Since that time, the organization has slowly coalesced, bringing together several coalition members, including: Fernwood Baptist Church, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Spartanburg, the Proud Mary Theatre Company, PFLAG Spartanburg, Piedmont Care, and Speaking Down Barriers (a project of UUCS minister, Scott Neely). Neely and Gardner are also behind LGBTQ+ Theologies, another member group of the Coalition.
The Spartanburg Pride Coalition’s role is to “fill the gap created when the Upstate Pride board moved the Pride celebration to Greenville,” according to Gardner.
On Saturday, July 11, the group is hosting an informal event at The Beerded Cork, a taproom and wine bar in Spartanburg to raise awareness of the Coalition’s existence and purpose among the area’s LGBTQ+ population and allies. The group will also present tentative plans for a revival of the Spartanburg Pride event.
Gardner was clear. “We are very determined that there will be something that is a Pride event in the fall.”
“This [Spartanburg] is the home of Pride in the upstate and should continue to have a Pride event,” she said.
The July 11 event is free to attend and open to the public.
