The fourth Utrecht Queer Culture Festival runs from 2 to 11 October 2026, finishing on Coming Out Day. Our event listing covers the dates and the organisation. Here is where the individual pieces of it are, and which of them work for a visitor who does not speak Dutch.
The Walk of Love, and why it starts where it does
The Walk of Love gathers at the Geertekerk, Geertekerkhof 23, on Saturday 3 October and runs from 13:30 to 15:30. The festival puts it on with COC Midden-Nederland, and the organisers call it fully wheelchair accessible. The route had not been published when this was written.
The starting point is the argument. The Geertekerk is a Remonstrant church, and it has blessed relationships between same-sex couples since 1986, fifteen years before the Netherlands opened civil marriage to them in 2001. That is forty years this year.
The anniversary runs through the rest of the programme too. A photo exhibition called Trouwen voor iedereen marks twenty five years of marriage equality and hangs on the second floor of Bibliotheek Neude from 3 to 24 October, so it outlasts the festival by a fortnight. A second exhibition, We Are, is on the ground floor of the same library.
What is on, day by day
The opening is on Friday 2 October at 19:30 at LE:EN, with the Dirkje Kuik lecture. Boris Dittrich, a politician and lawyer born in Utrecht, gives it this year.
Saturday 3 October, after the walk: Diva's van de Dom at Villa Concordia at 20:00, and a Queer Comedy Night at De Kargadoor at 20:30, which is billed in English. Sunday 4 October has the live podcast Lesbian Talk at De Kargadoor at 14:30, the dance piece Broken Self at ACU at 15:00, a womxn-only borrel at Teatro at 15:00, the opening of the Stripe-Tease Club exhibition at De Kargadoor at 16:00 and an open mic at Kantine Utrecht at 18:30.
Monday 5 October carries the second Queer Health Conference, at Media Plaza in the Jaarbeurs from 12:30, and a Queer City Tour that leaves the Domplein at 20:00. The festival closes on Sunday 11 October at De Helling at 15:30 with the Annie Brouwer-Korf prize, which has gone since 2007 to people and projects working on acceptance and visibility in the city. The three nominees this year are WILD Producties, the Transcafe LVB run by Transvisie and Regenboogmaatjes from Stichting De Tussenvoorziening.
Over ninety entries sit in the agenda across the ten days, most of them free or cheap, spread over roughly twenty venues rather than one site.
The city around it
One festival item is in a bar we list. Bubbles & Bites is at Cafe Kalff on Sunday 4 October at 17:00. The other two places we carry in Utrecht are the bar Bodytalk and the feminist and queer bookshop Savannah Bay. Everything in the festival sits inside the ring of canals or a short ride from it, apart from the Jaarbeurs, which is beside the central station.
The Netherlands scores 63.82 out of 100 on ILGA-Europe's Rainbow Index, behind Malta and Spain. Our Netherlands country page has the legal detail.
Nearby in the same weeks
Utrecht sits in the middle of a crowded October. Gooise Pride Month opens in Hilversum on 1 October, 16 km away. Pride Almere is on 7 October, 32 km. Leather & Fetish Pride Netherlands follows in Amsterdam on 15 October, 35 km. Ede Pride is on 2 October, 38 km, Coming In Week Arnhem starts on 11 October, 55 km, and Breda Pride is on 10 October, 61 km.