If winter has come, it’s surely the season for the well-known Winter Party Festival, a weeklong LGBTQ+ spectacle of music, dance, and community that takes place every year. This year, Winter Party Festival events will take place throughout the venue from Wednesday, March 1 to Tuesday, March 7, 2023, raising funds for the National LGBTQ Task Force. While it may be freezing and snowing where you live this time of year, you can enjoy sunny, fabulous Miami. So gather your friends and family and prepare to party for a good cause!
Miami's Winter Party Festival
Winter Party is a spot to revitalize and refresh the LGBTQ community and our allies. A place to unwind, fill our hearts, and stimulate our minds. We live in a constantly challenging society, saying that we are different, below, or other. While this is shifting, progress is slow, and discrimination remains. Even the toughest of us can succumb to it. It makes us crave sanctuary, places where we can be ourselves, embraced by our family, and welcomed and loved exactly as we are. Winter Party is that haven where we can live freely.
Winter Party Festival’s success is due to ingenuity and miracles. Winter Party Festival brings together the most incredible diversity of people, music, amusement, and best world DJ talent in one location. And it all takes place in Miami Beach, one of the most popular winter destinations. The magnitude of the Winter Party Festival is impressive, with over 10,000 guests from all over the world attending six days of events. And no matter their sexual orientation, gender expression, age, ethnicity, or faith, everyone is bound to feel welcome and at ease.
Previous Winter Party Festival
The Winter Party Festival celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2018, and the team has improved all aspects of the celebration to make it even more special than in previous years. The luxurious VIP Cocktail Reception will honor some of the people who helped make Winter Party the growing phenomenon that it is today, and the Festival has also relocated its Saturday and Sunday night parties to the James L. Knight Center, a world-class multifunction entertainment venue situated in the heart of downtown Miami.
Unfortunately, in 2020, the party was over before it even began. The Winter Party Festival, which was supposed to take place from March 2-8, 2020, has been forced to cancel. According to festival organizers, the sharp rise of COVID-19 outbreaks was to blame.
Party for a Cause
Winter Party Festival pioneers decided to bring the LGBT community to a party on the sands of South Beach in 1994. The original Winter Party consisted of a single event: a beach dance party. It was an immediate success, and Winter Party has only grown since then. Two decades later, that one night has evolved into an iconic six-day celebration that draws visitors worldwide. While many people associate the Winter Party Festival with many parties, this is only part of the picture. Sure, visitors come to have a good time. But the true goal is much more significant.
The overarching goal is very much bigger than the Festival itself. Winter Party is a fundraiser organized and supported by the National LGBTQ Task Force, and it is dedicated to fostering social change nationally and locally. Proceeds benefit South Florida organizations as well as the National LGBTQ Task Force, ensuring that they can continue their work. Through a grant-making procedure managed by The Miami Foundation’s LGBTQ Community Fund, the Task Force also pledged to give a considerable amount of the proceeds generated at the Winter Party and its sister occasion, the Task Force Gala, to like-minded advocacy organizations in South Florida.
The Task Force donated $207,000 to The Miami Foundation in 2020 and another $50,000 in 2021. This funding will go directly to 11 institutions in the Miami area that provide vital services to transgender youth, older adults, persons of color, and immigrants. In addition, proceeds from the 2022 Festival went toward the Task Force’s All of Me, All the Time campaign, which aims to get people to call out their federal elected officials and enlighten them about the challenge of discrimination and the necessity of federal policy solutions. Since 2005, the organization has shared more than $3.3 million with nearly 90 South Florida local organizations. This money is critical to empowering and uplifting the community and would not be feasible without your help!
