Fuerza Fest Is Not Just A Festival, It’s A Force Of Change

“Fuerza Fest“, the nation’s first LGBTQ+ Latine multidisciplinary arts festival, is back in New York City this May for its 10th anniversary. This year’s theme, “Force of Change,” sounds less like a festival title and more like a rallying call to the community.

From May 17 to May 31, Fuerza Fest is more than a lineup of events—it’s an act of cultural resistance. Since its founding in 2016 by the Hispanic Federation, the festival has served as both a sanctuary and loudspeaker for queer Latine artists, writers, performers, and community builders whose stories have long been excluded from traditional arts institutions. It’s half showcase and half survival. This year’s program lands with particular weight. It opens on May 17—International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia—with a dance performance choreographed by Carlos Falú at The LGBT Community Center in Manhattan. From there, events are being spread across a few venues, including the A.R.T., New York Theaters, and The Center, spanning two full weeks of theater, film, spoken word, drag, comedy, discussions, and community engagement.

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The schedule includes a queer film block on May 18; poetry and open mic night on May 19; a slate of new theater pieces and solo shows—including one by Our Flag Means Death’s Vico Ortiz; and a community roundtable on May 28, where local organizations come together to engage in complex, necessary dialogue. The festival closes with a comedy night on May 30 and a celebration on May 31. The whole schedule is available at fuerzafest.org.

But to talk about “Fuerza Fest” as just a calendar of events misses the point. This festival was born in grief and defiance just months after the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, where 49 LGBTQ+ people were killed, the majority of them Latine. That grief became fuel. And in the ten years since, Fuerza Fest has expanded beyond New York into cities like Hartford, Orlando, and Charlotte, offering culturally rooted platforms for queer Latines to not only express themselves—but to organize, educate, to survive.

Last year’s honoree, “Colectivo Intercultural Transgrediendo (a Queens-based group supporting the trans and nonbinary community)”, carried the festival’s intersectional mission. Other past years have featured experimental theater competitions, youth-focused art showcases, and bilingual storytelling nights that transcend genre and generation. Whether it’s a ballroom performance, a roundtable on gender, or a drag history lesson, every event at Fuerza Fest carries the urgency of visibility—and the refusal to accept erasure.

In a time when Latine and LGBTQ+ communities are under renewed political attack (from book bans to trans bans to immigration policy rollbacks), Fuerza Fest’s 10th anniversary is more than a milestone celebration. It’s a reminder that we are still here, making art and building joy.

This isn’t about inclusion. It’s about reclamation. It’s about changing the narrative, burning it down, and building something better in its place. Fuerza Fest continues to be precisely what its name promises: not a celebration, but a force.

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