Queer Arts Festival
PORTALS: June 6 – 28, 2025
Festival Theme: Portals
Portals are gateways to transformation—liminal spaces of transition, possibility, and change. For the 2025 Queer Arts Festival, Portals explores queer and trans experiences of crossing thresholds, stepping into new identities, and imagining futures beyond imposed boundaries. Presented in partnership with Centre A, this year’s curated visual exhibition also examines diasporic journeys, highlighting the intersections of queerness, migration, and belonging. In a time of rising anti-trans and anti-queer rhetoric, Portals is a call to reimagine the world, celebrating art’s power to forge new paths, challenge oppression, and open doors to liberation. Step through—what’s on the other side?
Festival Listings
VARIED EDITIONS — Curated by Edward Fu-Chen Juan & Cheryl Hamilton | Jun 6 – 28 | On Main Gallery | Free | Now in its third year, Varied Editions celebrates the diversity of printmaking practices within queer communities. Borrowing its name from the printmaking technique where artists alter individual…
Night Owl: Erica Roozendaal, accordion | Sunday, June 8 @ 7pm | SUM gallery | Pay-What-You-Wish | We’re thrilled to present the QAF debut of Dutch accordionist Erica Roozendaal. Visiting us from the Hague, Roozendaal shares an intimate program at SUM gallery that includes music written and inspired by Pauline…
QAF Community Art Show | June 14 – 28 | SUM gallery | OPENING RECEPTION: June 14, 5 – 8pm | Free | It’s no exaggeration to say the QAF Community Art Show is the backbone of our festival. It was the original event, begun in 1998, that would grow…
Curated Visual Art Exhibition: PORTALS — Curated by Mark Takeshi McGregor & Diane Hau Yu Wong | June 21 – August 23 | Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art | Pay-What-You-Wish | Our QAF 2025 theme is fully realized in this special exhibition partnership with Centre A:…
Queer Clothing Swap | June 22, 2 – 4pm | Sun Wah Centre, 4th Floor | Free | Looking to spice up your summer wardrobe? Look no further: We’re bringing back our super popular Queer Clothing Swap! Bring your clean, gently worn, unscented clothes over to the Sun Wah Centre…
Long Live Kings — Directed by Romi Kim | June 22, 1pm | SUM gallery | Free | Long Live Kings is a multi-episode series that puts a much needed spotlight on the vibrant Drag King scene on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (aka Vancouver)….
Presenting a Trio of Events in Partnership with Vancouver International Jazz Festival
Bruno Hubert Trio with Brad Turner | Granville Island Jazz | June 25, 2pm | Performance Works | Pay-What-You-Wish Bruno Hubert is one of Canada’s most expressive jazz pianists, with a deep sense of swing and melody that evokes Erroll Garner, Herbie Hancock, and Bill Evans—while always remaining unmistakably Bruno!…
Raagaverse featuring Cassius Khan | Granville Island Jazz | June 26, 8:30pm | Ocean Artworks | $15 at the door 2025 JUNO nominees for Jazz Album of the Year (Group), creative Indo-Jazz fusion band Raagaverse pays homage to two historical and culturally-significant genres: classical Hindustani music and jazz. Led by vocalist…
Allie Lynn King, Nate McBride, and Kenton Loewen | Granville Island Jazz | June 28, 5pm | Revue Stage | Pay-What-You-Wish Anchored in improvisation, Vancouver guitarist Allie Lynn King blends the roots of blues and jazz with the heaviness of doom metal and the abrasion of noise. Bassist Nate McBride…