Out N Bad’s ‘Stamina’ Festival Weekend Is The Queerfestivity You Need To Go To…Like Now!

Featured Image: Courtesy of Out N Bad

New York City has no shortage of Caribbean culture. Every Labor Day Weekend, the city practically vibrates with it. Dancehall and soca spill out of speakers, flags fly proudly, and Caribbean New Yorkers come together to fête, dance, eat, and celebrate the cultures that raised them.

New York also has no shortage of queer nightlife. But finding a space where being Queer and Caribbean isn’t treated like an either/or? That’s a different story.

That’s exactly the gap Out N Bad is filling with STAMINA, NYC’s first Queer Caribbean festival, returning September 4-6 for its third year. Produced independently by Out N Bad, the three-day festival brings Caribbean music, food, nightlife, and culture together in a space built specifically with the queer community in mind.

And STAMINA isn’t simply adding a rainbow flag to a Caribbean bash.

It’s creating something that Queer Caribbean New Yorkers have historically had far too little of: a place where every part of them gets to show up at once.

Before there was STAMINA, there was Out N Bad.

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Queer Jamaican DJ, multidisciplinary creative, and cultural producer KYE founded Out N Bad in New York City in 2022. Its beginnings were refreshingly straightforward: a nighttime Brooklyn bashment spinning strictly dancehall and soca.

But behind the party was a much bigger intention. “Out N Bad started because I couldn’t find a space that allowed me to fully revel in my identity, my culture, and my people,” KYE says. “I didn’t set out to build a festival—I set out to build a home.”

That distinction matters.

Queer Caribbean people can find themselves in an uncomfortable middle ground within nightlife. Mainstream queer spaces don’t always reflect Caribbean music, traditions, or cultural experiences, while traditional Caribbean nightlife doesn’t center queer people. STAMINA was created in direct response to that disconnect.

Out N Bad started answering it one dance floor at a time.

Its grassroots bashments centered the sounds of dancehall and soca alongside the people who wanted to experience them without separating their queerness from their Caribbean identity. And people showed up.

Then they kept showing up.

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Out N Bad has since thrown more than 40 bashments, sold more than 7,000 tickets, and built an audience of more than 12,000 “Queeribbeans” across social media and email. Its largest events have pulled roughly 500 people, and the brand has worked with venues including Lot45, Littlefield, The Meadows, Cafe Erzulie, and 3 Dollar Bill.

“What began as a party became a community, and that community demanded more than one night,” KYE says. So they gave them an entire weekend.

STAMINA launched in 2024 as the next evolution of what Out N Bad had already been creating: turning one-night gatherings into a multi-day cultural experience where Queer Caribbean joy could exist at a much larger scale.

In its first years, STAMINA hosted more than 500 Queer Caribbean attendees from New York and New Jersey as well as cities including Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, representing more than 20 Caribbean countries. That’s a long way from one Brooklyn bashment.

For its third year, STAMINA is going regal. The 2026 theme is The Royal Era, described by organizers as a mythic celebration of Queer Caribbean royalty where each fête becomes its own kingdom. Across three days and four events, the festival moves through reggae, dancehall, soca, nostalgia, paint, powder, wine, and, presumably, a whole lot of waistline.

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The weekend begins with LIME — The Arrival, a reggae and wine social built for exactly that: liming. Guests can settle into the weekend over wine, classic Caribbean games, and reggae played on vinyl before the serious fêting begins. 

Then comes DRIFT — The Tides of Poseidon, a ’90s and 2000s boat party with two decks of dancehall and soca throwbacks set against the Manhattan and Brooklyn skylines.

Saturday night brings the weekend’s crown jewel, BLACKOUT — The House of Cleopatra, an all-black-and-gold bashment gala where the focus returns to what started Out N Bad in the first place: the music and the dance floor.

Finally, COLORS — The Rebellion of Athena closes the festival with a paint-and-powder fête, turning the final dance floor into an explosion of color, movement, and collective release.

Three days. Four kingdoms. One very gay Caribbean weekend. But underneath the mythology, outfits, bass, and bacchanal is something much more grounded.

STAMINA is about belonging. There’s something powerful about getting to walk into a room and immediately understand that it was made with you in mind. “STAMINA is that evolution—a space where queer Caribbean culture isn’t an afterthought, it’s the foundation,” KYE says.

It’s a deceptively simple idea, but one that carries weight.

For many queer people of color, nightlife has historically done more than provide somewhere to dance. The party becomes a meeting place, a chosen-family reunion, a dating pool, a fashion show, a networking event, and sometimes one of the few places where you can look around and see a room full of people whose lives overlap with yours.

For Queer Caribbean people, STAMINA adds another layer: cultural recognition. The music doesn’t need explaining. Neither does the food, the flags, the games, the movement, or the feeling of hearing the right dancehall song come on at exactly the right moment. And neither does the queerness. That’s what makes the festival’s growth feel bigger than its increasingly packed calendar.  Like KYE mentioned, this isn’t just a festival but a home.  It just turns out that home needed three days, four kingdoms, and just enough soca.

STAMINA: The Royal Era takes place September 4–6, 2026, across multiple venues in New York City. Festival passes are sold out, with a limited number of individual event tickets currently available.