Thessaloniki Pride is a civil society organization that aims to promote the social visibility of gay, lesbian, bi, trans, and intersex people, as well as any other minority in terms of sexual and gender identity. It further campaigns for the equality and champions the rights of these groups in Thessaloniki and the wider region.
Thessaloniki Pride was founded in the spring of 2012 with the initial aim to organize the Pride festival at a period when the city’s creative powers were going through a renaissance. After the unexpected great success of the first Pride festival, the organization was emboldened and extended its activities in other domains. As time passed, the activities could be classified in four categories:
1) The Thessaloniki Pride festival, the main LGBTIQ+ pride event of Thessaloniki every June, which asserts the right of LGBTIQ+ people to reveal themselves in the public space and participate in the public dialogue openly with their identity. The annual festival, which has been established as the biggest human rights event of Thessaloniki in terms of participation count, brings to the city a celebration of diversity, freedom, and defiance to the conservative past.
2) Informational events or of a social intervention character, during the whole year, such as daily workshops, training seminars, training programs to non-LGBTIQ+ organizations on topics of gender, sexuality, and inclusion, support services to vulnerable groups of the LQBTIQ+ community, art exhibitions, radio and television broadcasts, and online campaigns.
3) Actions targeting networking and empowering the civil society, both horizontally with other LGBTIQ+ organizations at a national, peripheral, and European level, as well as vertically at a local level among all civil society organizations of Thessaloniki.
4) Activism on legal matters, especially to activate the anti-racism law through allegations of events of homophobic and transphobic hate speech.