All events in Heraklion
Pride in
Crete's Pride is based in Heraklion and is not only a march: it began as a festival of visibility, and the name it was given from the start says so plainly.
Nothing on right now
Pride events cluster in the summer, but every city sets its own dates - Heraklion often runs its march and its parties a month apart from the next city on this list.
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Pride in Heraklion
On 26 June 2015 the first "Visibility and Reclaiming Festival for the Liberation of Gender, Body, Sexuality: LGBTQI+ Pride Crete" was organised in Heraklion. It was the second Pride Greece gained, after Athens, and the first outside the two big urban centres. The name is not a detail: the project placed itself explicitly as a claim to visibility on an island where LGBTQI+ life had until then been publicly invisible, and its identity remains island-wide - Pride Crete, not Pride of Heraklion.
Heraklion is Crete's largest city and its administrative and student centre, so it draws people from across the island - from Chania and Rethymno to Agios Nikolaos and Sitia. That gives the event a reach greater than the city's own population. The nightlife runs year-round in the centre, in venues around the Lions Square and Koronaiou, and follows the student rather than the tourist cycle. The list here shows the city's LGBTQ+ friendly events as a whole and not only the days of Pride; out of season it thins and what remains are the venues' standing nights.
Common questions
When did Pride Crete start?+
On 26 June 2015, with the first "Visibility and Reclaiming Festival for the Liberation of Gender, Body, Sexuality: LGBTQI+ Pride Crete" in Heraklion. It was Greece's second Pride, after Athens.
Why is it called Pride Crete rather than Pride of Heraklion?+
Because its identity is island-wide: Heraklion is the base, but the event addresses all of Crete and draws people from Chania, Rethymno and the eastern side of the island.