FLAG - Queer Culture Festival

A queer festival in the heart of Rome

FLAG - Queer Culture Festival is the Roman event dedicated to LGBTQIA+ cultures that, every year in mid-September, transforms the Nicola Calipari Gardens of Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II into a large public meeting space. We are in the Esquilino district, one of the most multicultural neighborhoods in Rome, within the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital, in the Lazio region: a setting the festival chose intentionally, as it speaks to coexistence, plural identities, and shared spaces.

The event is promoted and organized by Gaycs LGBT APS, the LGBTI events sector of AiCS, with the support of Rome Capital and the Presidency of the Capitoline Assembly, and is part of the summer arena program in Piazza Vittorio. Admission is free until capacity is reached: a deliberate choice that makes FLAG one of the most accessible cultural events of the Roman summer.

Cinema, books, music, and dialogue

The festival is multidisciplinary by vocation. Over the three evenings, the program features film screenings, book presentations, talks and debates, musical moments, performances, and DJ sets. Cinema remains the heart of the festival—short films, documentaries, and feature films that recount orientations, gender identities, and lives often invisible on mainstream screens—but alongside the screen, there is space for queer publishing, live comedy, new media, and direct dialogue with activists.

• Evening screenings in the open-air arena of Piazza Vittorio
• Book presentations with Italian and international authors
• Talks and debates on civil rights, memory, and current events
• Live music and DJ sets to close the evenings
• Stand-up comedy and digital languages

A different theme for every edition

Each edition of FLAG revolves around a central theme that guides the programming. The 2025 edition, the sixth, was held under the title "C'entriamo tuttə" (We all fit in/We are all involved) and addressed themes of inclusion and migration, the memory of rights twenty-five years after the Rome World Pride 2000, and the topics of end-of-life care and self-determination. This is the festival's method: starting from culture to reach the issues that shape Italian society, without simplification or aggressive tones.

Piazza Vittorio, a space that matters

Choosing Piazza Vittorio means a great deal for a festival like this. The largest monumental square in Rome, with its 19th-century porticoes and the remains of the Trophies of Marius, has been a laboratory for coexistence between diverse communities for years. The internal gardens, named after Nicola Calipari, host the film arena during the summer that welcomes FLAG: a mixed audience made up of neighborhood residents, casual spectators, and people who have come specifically for the festival.

Why attend

FLAG is not an event reserved for an initiated elite. It is designed as a bridge: those passing through the square can stop, sit down, and listen. For those visiting Rome in September, when the city regains a more livable rhythm after August, it is also a different way to discover the Esquilino district, away from the most beaten tourist paths and immersed in a cultural program that the Capital has been running outdoors for years.