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The purpose of this paper is to explore the authentic experiences and sense-making processes of LGBTQ+ participants of Amsterdam Pride as well as their bodily and spatial interactions that arise during the festival.

By taking a critical, poststructuralist stance on pride festivals and drawing on 40 in-depth interviews and participant observation, the data are subjected to an inductive, qualitative, thematic content analysis for key themes.

Amsterdam Pride provides distinct spaces for LGBTQ+ individuals to express their carnivalesque bodily practices freely. While Pride offers an existential authentic experience by creating spaces for LGBTQ+ individuals where they can be themselves, the participants exhibit their “authentic” identities freely only within limited time and space that are not separated from the heteronormative order. Pride is increasingly perceived by LGBTQ+ participants as an arena for demonstrating their “normality”. Thus, the paper “signposts” greater political tensions between the queer movement and growing normalisation/citizenship trends among LGBTQ+ individuals.

The paper contributes to a growing body of knowledge around issues of LGBTQ+ identities within the context of an oppressive heteronormative social order. It also reinforces the need for pride festivals for embracing queer, disruptive, sexually dissident expressions of identity as well as continuing transgressive and sexually dissident spaces. This study fills a significant void in the mainstream festival and event management literature and contributes to the theoretical development of festival and critical tourism research by identifying aspects of LGBTQ+ tourists’ authentic experiences at Amsterdam Pride.