Tartu Pride 2024: A huge success for the small Baltic city
Attitude's travel editor Markus Bidaux visits Tartu, Estonia’s second city, as it hosted its second Pride festival
Estonia’s second city has celebrated its second Pride after the country’s first took place some 20 years ago in Tallinn, with Tartu Pride 2024.
The organisers of Tartu2024, the EU-backed Capital of Culture, made Tartu Pride the LGBTQ+ highlight of their year-long programme of events.
The Pride march took place on Saturday 17 August. Approximately 3,000 people gathered at the starting point in Hurda Park at 1 pm to cheers and pop music playing out on loudspeakers, when the parade of people started their protest.
In contrast to bigger events such as Brighton Pride, there were no floats in the parade. And even though it was a very warm day, there were no shirtless men in the parade either…
Estonia just introduced marriage equality on 1 January 2024, which has resulted in many weddings this year, so the community had a lot to celebrate.
Many of the placards seen were in support of the trans community and the need for better trans medical support. Similar to the UK, many trans people in Estonia must wait years to see doctors to start their transition.
There were also many people protesting in support of immigrants and Palestine.
The parade featured drag queens and kings, many LGBTQ+ families with children, furries, and a huge Bear Pride flag was carried by six hirsute men including the two founders of Estonia’s annual bear festival Tallinn Bearty.
While the Pride was supported by two banks, there were no businesses marching in the parade.
There were no anti-protesters harassing the marchers, which was a nice change from almost every other Pride the world over, though there were also no spectators.
People out and about did stop to watch, though there didn’t appear to be any crowds out to cheer on the marchers.
Keio Soomelt, one of Tartu Pride’s organisers, told me that Estonia’s first Pride 20 years ago only had about 200 marchers.
Estonia is part of Baltic Pride, alongside fellow ex-Soviet countries Latvia and Lithuania, so the capital Tallinn only hosts Pride every three years. Last year saw about 9,000 celebrate Pride.
The Parade ended in Town Hall Square ,where a stage was set up for Pride Concert featuring speakers, LGBTQ+ choirs, drag artists and other acts.
Tartu Pride has been hailed as a success and we hope the small university city full of young forward thinkers has many more to come.