We call on queers to participate in a total boycott of Midsumma 2026. So what does that mean?

HOW TO BOYCOTT:

• Don’t attend Midsumma affiliated events;
• Don’t participate in Midsumma (for free or payment);
• Make your boycott known to those around you and encourage them to join in;
• Hold your own events – email transqueersolidarity@proton.me to have your event added to the calendar!

CONTEXT
A community boycott of midsumma festival has been called by grassroots queer and ex-detainee groups. The Midsumma boycott reflects grassroots rejection of a “queer pride” festival that is infiltrated by cops, corporations, zionists and weapons manufacturers

This boycott was first called by RISE ex-detainees in 2023 over ties to vicpol, private security firm serco, and political parties – all complicit in the forced imprisonment of refugees. This complicity is part of a broader connection to imperialist, colonial and zionist entities.

Midsumma uses queer communities to pinkwash land theft and genocide both on this continent and elsewhere. Queer liberation will not be achieved through colonial assimilation into a state that enacts genocide on Indigenous people and tortures refugees. WE REJECT being used to these ends.

Midsumma is an UNACCOUNTABLE CORPORATION. It shares no interests with ANY oppressed people. Midsumma is only interested in the pink dollar; spitting on the radical roots of queer resistance; and collaborating with a government whose very existence prohibits queer liberation.
Attempts have been made to address midsumma’s complicit role in pinkwashing through open letters, which have been largely ignored by Midsumma, and disruptions, which have had more impact. Midsumma has historically dropped more atrocious partners in response to community backlash, but their corporate hypocrisy remains the same every year. The issue of police marching in the pride march, for example, was only addressed once a number of other participants began pulling out in 2025 – following many years of community agitation to get the cops out of pride.

Midsumma’s “solution” – a ban on all uniforms – fails to address the real issue with police attendance that was being raised in the first place. The uniform ban is wholly performative and ignores the ongoing violence that queers and our comrades are subjected to at the hands of vicpol.

While vicpol pulling out of the 2026 march over this ban is a small victory, Midsumma have made it clear that they would welcome vicpol’s return to the march.

Vicpol are out on a technicality, not because Midsumma has moved towards their supposed commitment to ‘human rights’ that would exclude violent institutions.

Vicpol’s insistence on marching only if they can do so in uniform with armed security detail also shows that they are less interested in “supporting queers” (bleugh) and more interested in bashing us if their attendance was to be disrupted again.

Midsumma maintains an active role in queer oppression and pinkwashing.

Withdrawing labour and interest in Midsumma while participating in grassroots alternatives undermines Midsumma’s pinkwashing while strengthening queer organising and resistance, for a community free of corporate and political manipulation.