The Bendigo Pride 2025 Program Is Out & Proud, And Not To Be Missed
Image: Bendigo Pride/supplied
Some may overlook our incredible regional LGBTQIA+ festivals in favour of their inner-city cousins – but Bendigo Pride definitely holds its own during Australia’s pride season.
Launching its program early last month, Bendigo Pride’s newly appointed director Em Ireland has grand plans for the festival this year.
“The beautiful past directors have kind of grown a film festival into a Pride festival and more, spanned over three weeks,” Em says. “I’ve taken it back into a shorter format of four days.
“I’ve also moved it from going just up to the middle of Pride, to the end of March, to give everyone a bit of breathing space and a chance to decompress.”
New year, new pride: A new evolution for Bendigo Pride
For 2025, Bendigo Pride is trading its usual couple of weeks of celebrations for an intimate long weekend in March, with the usual film festival pushed back to winter (“There’s just not a lot for the Bendigo LGBT community to do in winter,” Em confides), and the Halloween Glamaganza Ball in October.
“And I’m keeping some of the original things that people love, because why would you reinvent the wheel? So we’ve still got Pride in the Park, and we’ll be doing a big dance party, of course.
“We’re trying to bring in the beautiful, multicultural kind of fabric that is Bendigo, as well as LGBT community.”
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Both queer communities and regional communities are famous for being tight knit, and the intersection of these two groups in the Bendigo region just intensifies this feeling.
“Everyone knows everyone,” Em laughs. “So when you put the call out, everyone responds. I’m really enjoying that. We’ve got a lot of really good organisations in place.
“I feel like there’s a really good space in Bendigo for the community already… there’s lots of people around me to help me navigate those waters, so to speak, I’m really grateful for that.”
Regional pride is ready to be seen and heard
Celebrating queerness is a bit different in regional communities than it is in the city. For many regional areas, there’s no nearby gay bar, and drag performances at the pub aren’t nearly as frequent, if ever. Expressions of queerness can be harder to find and different from what some people are used to – but they are absolutely, without a doubt, there.
“We still have a long way to go in many of our Victorian regional communities to make celebration safe, you know, to be able to be out and proud,” Em says. “So I think it’s even more important with that distance between us, to get together and connect and celebrate community, and kind of remind everyone that we’re all in this together.
“We’re working pretty hard to be seen and heard in regional Victoria. I think there’s some really good things happening.”
For many regional queer folks, feelings of isolation are still common – especially for young people and trans and gender diverse people – but Em says that by showing up and standing proud, they’re making it easier for those who’ll come after.
“The more we celebrate our queer community, the more we can get together and grow it and give people the opportunity to be a part of it… it’s really important.”
It’s this communal feeling that Em thinks of when she’s asked about her favourite event on the program.
“I think [my favourite event] when we get everybody together outside, in the botanical gardens at Rosalind Park for Pride in the Park,” Em says.
A classic park gathering and market is a vital part of most Pride celebrations on the calendar, and Bendigo is no different. Pride in the Park is a free, full day event on 29 March, complete with performances by ARIA-charting pop sensation Adam Noviello and cabaret and circus performer Sophie deLightful.
“It’s like a big gathering for all of us,” Em says. “And you know, I think celebrating out in the open like that is, yeah, it’s probably the best feeling, or the most feeling of pride that anyone can feel.”
Bendigo Pride will open on 27 March 2025, with a lunch at Omari and a special performance from cabaret drag act, Leather Lungs. The full program can be found here.
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