The city's summer LGBTQ+ calendar starts Saturday with free documentary screenings and mortifying journal readings, and ends August 30 at Civic Center Park — a bigger venue for the flagship festival in its second year.

Summer Pride in Berkeley doesn't collapse into a single weekend. This year's calendar runs from Saturday, June 13 through Sunday, August 30, when Berkeley Pride Festival closes the season at Civic Center Park — a meaningful step up from last year's location on Oxford Street below UC Berkeley's crescent lawn. The new park is more open, more accessible, and better suited to the free, all-ages format the Pacific Center for Human Growth has been building.

The season opens this Saturday with a strong back-to-back: at 2 p.m., South Branch Library is showing No Straight Lines, a documentary about five LGBTQ+ comic book artists who pushed the form into visibility, with director Vivian Kleiman and artist Ajuan Mance in conversation after. Free. Then, 7:30 p.m. at 1317 San Pablo Ave., MORTI-PRIDE assembles an all-queer cast to read aloud from their teenage journals — first kisses, cringeworthy song lyrics, the full catastrophe. Tickets $25-$35.

Through June, the calendar holds: Frameline's SF International LGBTQ+ Film Festival puts four international queer films at BAMPFA June 19-26, tickets $18.50-$19.50. The Freight hosts its second annual Pride show June 28, 7 p.m. — a women-and-nonbinary concert curated by Vicki Randle and anchored by queer Oakland quartet Skip the Needle, $25-$44. A Heated Rivalry trivia night at West Branch Library (June 25, 5:30 p.m., free) is already full, but a waitlist is open.

The anchor: Berkeley Pride 2026: From Joy to Justice — Sunday, August 30, 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park (Allston Way at MLK). Free. No RSVP. BART to Downtown Berkeley puts you five minutes from the park on foot. Co-manager Matthew Easterwood told Berkeleyside the theme "recognizes that our joy is powerful, especially in a time when LGBTQIA+ communities continue to face discrimination and attacks on our rights."

The insider tip: BAMPFA's Frameline screenings are the most underrated item on this list. Smaller crowds than any street fair, and the programming runs international rather than crowd-tested. The June 26 closing film — Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World, 7 p.m., 2087 Addison St. — is the one to catch.

If you have two hours on August 30: arrive at Civic Center Park around noon, find a spot while it's still early, and stay through the first performer set. The free midday window is where the festival earns its name.