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Polk Pride Festival celebrates 10 years of providing safe space to LGBTQ community

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Published  June 14, 2025 5:00pm EDT
Polk County
FOX 13 News
Celebrating pride in Polk County

Celebrating pride in Polk County

FOX 13's Jordan Bowen went to the Polk Pride Festival where they celebrated 10 years.

The Brief

    • Polk Pride hosts 10th anniversary pride celebration at Munn Park.
    • The festival draws thousands of people and more than 140 vendors.
    • Organizers say strong support from businesses in 2025 is especially meaningful.

LAKELAND, Fla. - Love was in the air in Lakeland on Saturday as Polk Pride celebrated its 10th annual pride festival.

Thousands of people packed Munn Park to take in more than 140 vendors from food to arts and crafts to celebrate the LGBTQ community.

Polk Pride hosts 10th anniversary pride celebration at Munn Park.

"Our theme this year is intentionally proud, so what better year intentionally proud is to stand out and make sure everybody knows that we're here," Polk Pride Board President Scott Guira said.

Timeline:

Polk Pride began in 2016.

"We only had maybe 20-something vendors and maybe 200 people out in this park. So to see that we have a hundred and forty-something vendors and throughout the day we're going to end up having thousands of people here is amazing. This is just such a great experience," Polk Pride Vice-President Kerri McCoy said.

Polk Pride hosts 10th anniversary pride celebration at Munn Park.

For organizers, they say having a safe space for the LGBTQ community is more important than ever now.

"Some organizations have seen a pullback. Fortunately, a lot of our folks are smaller organizations. We actually have seen an increase in donations. We've seen an increased in the number of vendors. So we've actually grown even in a time. I think the people are stepping up because they know it's more important than ever," Guira said.

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The strong support from businesses comes at a time when some large companies have pulled back their support of the LGBT community. 

For Veronica Campos, who co-owns Uncle Brian's Baked Good with her husband, pride hits close to home.

What they're saying:

"It's kind of dear to us because we have family members, and we were raised in the 80s and 90s when a lot of people were like suppressed, and we saw a lot our family members that it's still kind of in the closet, we'll say, and it's dear to us that. They need to know that we love them and support them. And we are here to show appreciation to them. And we have a lot of vendors and volunteers that work here," Campos said.

Polk Pride hosts 10th anniversary pride celebration at Munn Park.

Organizers say the festival wouldn’t be possible without the strong support from the community, which continues to grow year after year.

"For an event like this, people are willing to come out, they're willing to celebrate, they are going to spend money while they are down here. We have vendors here but also all these shops are going to benefit from the extra traffic down here too," Guira said.

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The Source: Information for this story was gathered by FOX 13's Jordan Bowen.

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