The 24th Belgian Pride Parade will take place this Saturday in Brussels, with more than 100,000 people expected to be in attendance – a new record.
The slogan for this year’s parade is “All for One”, while its chosen theme is that of intersectionality, a term intended to signify the way in which different aspects of social, political and gender discrimination can overlap with one another.
By choosing this theme, Belgian Pride and and its supporting organisations want to underline how much the identity of an individual is not merely reducible to their skin colour, sexual orientation, gender, religion, disability or age.
“In addition, intersectionality is an obvious reference to the Stonewall riots in New York in 1969, just 50 years ago,” says Cyrille Prestianni, president of Belgian Pride. “These incidents marked the beginning of a fight that the global LGBTI + community (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and other people) is still fighting today.”
On Saturday, May 18, more than 45 organisations will be holding a ‘Pride Village’ from 12.00 pm at Mont des Arts. A Pride Parade Kick-Off will then take place in the village from 1.45 pm, hosted by Cesár Sampson, the Belgian contestant for the Eurovision Song Contest in 2018.
The Pride Parade will start at 2.30 pm. It will begin by passing through Pride Village, before heading through the streets Ravenstein, Arenberg, the Squire, Fripiers, Midi and Lombard, before eventually returning to its starting point.
No cars will be allowed on the Pride route during the parade. Public transport will also be interrupted between 12 pm and 7 pm on Ravenstein street, and from 2 pm to 7 pm on the rest of the route. Various celebrations are also scheduled to take place from 5 pm, when the parade is scheduled to finish.
Several security measures will be taken to ensure the safety of festival-goers, including searches at the entrance of Pride Village. It is also advisable not to take a backpack to the parade if one can avoid it.