Welcome to a Swing Dance Festival for Queers and Allies!
We are happy to announce the fifth edition of Gothenburg Queer Lindy Festival 19th-21st September 2025!!!
Welcome to a festival where we acknowledge and celebrate the queer expressions of swing dancing.
Practical:
When: September 19th to September 21st 2025.
Where: Gothenburg, Sweden.
Location: Forum, at Doktor Fries Torg 7.
This is our main venue and the home of West Coast Jitterbugs. All parties and most classes will be at Forum.
Price: Solidarity pricing.
Registration opens: May 31st 2025, 13:00 CEST.
Registration closes: June 10th, a lottery is held for courses that has more people applied than can be accepterd. Then registrations open up if spots are still available.
This webpage is currently under construction. For more info and updates, check out our Instagram or Facebook page.
Is this Festival for Me?
This swing dance festival is a space for queer dancers and allies on all levels of dancing skill.
If you are a queer dancer, or a queer person wanting to learn lindy hop in a queer space, this festival is for you. If you are an ally who supports the vision of the festival, this event is also for you.
The creators of early swing music were black. The dancers of early lindy hop, the people we look at for inspiration were black. A lot of them were also gay, lesbian and/or trans people. Some of the early dance scenes in the 1930’s and 40’s were places that LGBTQ people could feel free to express their genuine selves without fear of being banned, mocked or incarcerated. As contemporary dancers in the lindy hop culture we should not disregard or minimize the fact that many of us do not have the same knowledge of the culture they lived in. Most dancers then were black, most dancers nowadays are white. They did not care about the norms we have today on leading and following.
With this event we are celebrating these black and queer people who in today’s society still are underprivileged in one or more ways. If you’re not of African-American or African heritage, remember who created the dance. If you are cis and hetero, and want to learn more about how to better accommodate queer dancers in your community, consider yourself welcome. But we remind you to be respectful of the queer space we are creating together. We don’t tolerate any kind of harassments, but we are also human beings like you. If you think of something that we haven’t thought of, please contact us. We are open to hear from you.
An Inclusive Dance Floor
Make sure to read through the Code of conduct before signing up for the festival.
Our goal is for the Gothenburg Queer Lindy Festival to be a fun, welcoming and inclusive festival for all participants, both during class time as well as on the social dance floor. We want queers and people of color to feel welcome, wanted and comfortable.
In order to create a friendly and welcoming atmosphere, we have established a code of conduct that applies to all the participants at the festival.
We want you as a participant to take responsibility for your actions and to be respectful when you meet other participants at the festival. We all have different knowledge and experiences and we hope that you will be considerate of this. Sometimes you make mistakes, despite good intentions. When this happens, please apologize.
You can always talk with the organizers if you feel unsafe or uncomfortable.