Alki Beach Pride returns to West Seattle next Saturday, August 15, with a street party stretching along Alki Avenue SW and a full day of drag performances, DJ sets, comedy, food trucks and local vendors. The festival, created by Stacy Bass-Walden and Jolie Bass-Walden more than a decade ago, has grown bigger every year and remains the only beach-focused Pride celebration in Washington state.
Official festival hours run from noon to 8 p.m. on August 15, according to West Seattle Blog, and Alki Avenue SW will close to traffic between 57th and 61st for the street party, from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. that day. The lineup includes a family-friendly kids' zone, a health and wellness zone, live entertainment, and social gatherings hosted at local participating businesses. Organizers describe the event as a way to extend LGBTQIA2S+ visibility beyond June, per the same report.
A Dozen Years From an Apartment Gathering to a Citywide Fixture
Stacy and Jolie Bass-Walden founded Alki Beach Pride in 2014, building it from a small gathering in their apartment into an annual community festival centered on queer and BIPOC voices, according to Seattle Pride. The organization notes the founders created the gathering to reclaim space in West Seattle, a neighborhood that historically faced systemic housing exclusion through redlining. As one of the few Black lesbian Pride festival founders in the state, Bass-Walden has focused the event on mentoring young organizers and increasing visibility for the community, Seattle Pride reports.
That work earned Bass-Walden recognition this summer as the recipient of Seattle Pride's 2026 Ackerman Award for Service, an honor established in 2024 to recognize leaders who uplift the LGBTQIA2S+ community. Weeks later, Bass-Walden and her wife Jolie rode near the front of the 52nd annual Seattle Pride Parade in a convertible representing Alki Beach Pride, as thousands of spectators lined 4th Avenue, West Seattle Blog reported.
No Beach Bonfires This Year
Attendees planning to gather around Alki's beach fire pits after the street party will find them off-limits this year. King County's Fire Marshal enacted a Stage 2 Fire Safety Burn Ban effective August 7, prohibiting all outdoor recreational fires and temporarily suspending bonfires in designated pits at Alki Beach Park, as Hoodline previously reported in its coverage of the burn ban. The restriction was triggered by sustained hot and dry summer weather conditions.
Park visitors should also plan around Seattle Parks and Recreation's updated summer hours, which close Alki Beach Park at 10:30 p.m. daily with parking lot gates locked at night, according to FOX 13 Seattle. Those hours were established to manage late-night crowds along the waterfront. Anyone hoping to avoid the neighborhood's notorious parking crunch can take King County Metro's West Seattle Water Taxi from Pier 50 in Downtown Seattle, a 10- to 15-minute passenger ferry ride across Elliott Bay that connects to local shuttle routes and waterfront pedestrian paths, per King County.
Neighborhood Safety Talks Ahead of the Festival
The Bass-Waldens have also been active in broader West Seattle safety conversations in recent weeks. In July, the pair joined an Alki Community Council meeting with Seattle City Council Member Rob Saka and Deputy Mayor Brian Surratt to address waterfront public safety, lighting and police staffing, according to the Alki Community Council. Community leaders at that meeting requested high-visibility evening patrols following incidents around the Fourth of July.
On the entertainment side, Alki Beach Pride's schedule includes drag performers, DJs and comedy acts alongside its vendor and food truck lineup. Rainbow City Performing Arts, a regional arts organization that donates live performances to local nonprofit Pride events across the region, is partnering with the festival to provide free musical ensemble performances and fundraising support, the group notes on its website.
