After 2024 Cancellation, Gay8 Festival Returns on a Smaller Scale

Last year's edition was canceled due to a lack of funding from the city.

February 6, 2025

Image: a group of men at a gay pride festival

The Gay8 Festival returns this year after its 2024 cancelation. Photo by Carina Mask

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Gay8, a free street festival celebrating Miami's queer Latin culture, is returning to Little Havana after a year away. This time, though, organizers say the event will be scaled back and renamed Gay8 House Party.

The Gay8 Festival launched in 2016 and continued through 2023, but it was canceled in 2024. Earlier this week, organizers announced the event would return to Little Havana, albeit on a smaller scale near Domino Park on Sunday, February 16.

In previous years, the festival consisted of live music, food vendors, and pop-up activations. In that regard, it doesn't appear much has changed. This year's performers include singers Lucy Grau, Lena Burke, and Robbie Elias. Alex Gutierrez will also DJ. The Macho and Lynn’s Girl Central dance parties will also return this year, as will a wide array of food vendors selling empanadas, arepas, croquetas, and more.

New Times reached out to 4Ward Miami, the nonprofit that organizes Gay8, to ask about the reasoning behind the festival's smaller footprint in 2025. In an email, Aly Ramos, a board member of the organization, wrote, "The decision to present Gay8 as a more intimate event...stems from our desire to foster deeper connections with the community and provide a meaningful experience for attendees."

But it's worth noting the change comes just one year after the Miami Herald reported the 2024 edition "did not receive enough funding from sponsors and the City of Miami, which has provided financial support and services for the festival in previous years." At the time, Ramos also told the paper the city did not say why it denied the funds.

In her statement to New Times, Ramos noted "the larger festival format is taking a pause in 2025," so it seems like a return to form is not totally out of the question in the future.

Gay8 House Party. 11 a.m. on Sunday, February 16, at Domino Park, 1444 Southwest Eighth St., Miami. gay8festival.com. Admission is free.

Before rejoining Miami New Times as culture editor in 2025, Celia Almeida freelanced for the paper starting in 2016, then came aboard as a staff editor in 2018. Beginning in late 2019, she served as digital editor for Ink. Her writing has been featured in Billboard, Consequence, Paper, and Rolling Stone, among other outlets.

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