ColognePride has published its dates for next year. The festival period runs from Friday 11 June to Sunday 4 July 2027. The CSD street festival takes the last three days, Friday 2 July to Sunday 4 July, and the CSD demonstration, the parade itself, closes the whole thing on Sunday 4 July. KölnTourismus, the city's tourist board, gives the same festival period.
The street festival is held around Heumarkt, Gürzenich and Alter Markt in the old town, which the tourist board describes as one of the largest street festivals in the city. The same body puts the last comparable parade, in 2023, at more than 220 walking groups and floats.
No motto has been announced for 2027. The 2026 edition ran under "FÜR QUEERRECHTE", for queer rights, with the subtitle "Viele. Gemeinsam. Stark!"
Why the dates are worth having this early
Cologne fills up for its CSD weekend, and the parade Sunday is the day the city is fullest. Anyone who wants to be there in 2027 now knows which weekend to hold, ten months out, which is the point at which hotel rates in the old town and around Rudolfplatz are still ordinary. The festival period is long, three and a half weeks, so a visit that is not aimed at the parade has plenty of room either side of it.
The summer that preceded it
The 2027 dates arrive after a season in which Cologne's queer organisations were on the street outside the Pride calendar. On Sunday 9 August 2026, an alliance that included ColognePride and Aidshilfe Köln called a Queer March from the Deutzer Werft through the city centre to Friesenplatz, two weeks after the attack at Berlin's CSD. The organisers counted about 10,000 people, the police 4,000 to 5,000. In their call, the organisers asked the federal government, the state and the city for measures to protect queer structures and queer life.
Our Germany page sets out the legal position for visitors. The bars, saunas and shops we list in Cologne include Ex-Corner, The 3B and the Phoenix Sauna.
