This year, Belgium Bearpride celebrates the richness and diversity of masculinities that make up the bear community. Through the theme “Bear Folies”, we want to highlight all the ways of being masculine, queer, flamboyant, tender, powerful, or free, without having to choose a single identity or conform to a single image.

Behind the codes often associated with the bear universe lies a vast spectrum of expressions, sensitivities, and lived experiences: some relate to a more traditional masculinity, others play with the codes of femininity, cabaret, performance, or glamour, and many find themselves somewhere between these poles, or beyond.

This theme is an invitation to embrace this plurality. Between leather and sequins, beards and heels, strength and softness, there is no contradiction: all these facets can co-exist within the same person.

“Bear Folies” celebrates precisely this freedom to navigate between codes, to subvert them, to assert them, or to reinvent them. It is neither a caricature nor an opposition between masculine and feminine, but rather a celebration of all the nuances that exist between these expressions and of all the identities that refuse to be boxed in.

Marking the 15th anniversary of Belgium Bearpride, this theme also carries a strong symbolic dimension. For fifteen years, the bear community in Brussels has evolved, opened up, and gained visibility. This anniversary is an opportunity to pay tribute to this evolution, to the boldness of those who have helped build more inclusive spaces, and to all the people who carry multiple, sometimes invisible, facets within themselves. “Bear Folies” aims to remind us that the bear community is multifaceted, vibrant, and deeply diverse.