For 35 years, The Dinah has offered queer women a place to take over Palm Springs, dance by the pool and experience the kind of community that can be difficult to find anywhere else. Now, new co-owners Bella Barkow and Rose Garcia are ready to carry that legacy forward while making the festival more inclusive than ever.
Running from Sept. 30 through Oct. 4, the 2026 festival will feature Hayley Kiyoko, Da Brat, Sasha Keable and The Aces, alongside 10 DJs and a returning comedy lineup that includes Cameron Esposito, Pink Foxx and Abe Farrelly.
But for Barkow and Garcia, The Dinah has always been about much more than the artists onstage.
“The Dinah really is a legacy project,” Barkow told Gayety. “It’s something that’s been happening for 34 years and has done so much for the community.”
Barkow reflected on how the gathering evolved from a relatively quiet meeting place for queer women attending the Dinah Shore golf tournament into a massive, proudly visible celebration.
“It’s now out, proud, in the open, visible,” she said. “It’s so beautiful and so important to me because I think it is events like this that have made that possible. It’s made it possible for queer people to feel like they can be out.”
Garcia still remembers piling into a car with friends from Los Angeles because they could only afford to attend one Sunday pool party. Even after coming from a city with several lesbian bars and events, she was stunned to meet queer women who had traveled from around the world.
“I never would’ve thought something like this existed,” Garcia said. “I can only imagine how that impacts someone from a smaller market.”
Garcia’s history with The Dinah also played out on television. She attended the festival while filming Showtime’s The Real L Word, the reality spinoff that followed a group of queer women navigating their relationships, careers and social lives in Los Angeles. Because the cast was not allowed to reveal what they were filming, Garcia recalled confused attendees watching camera crews follow them around the festival.
“People were just like, ‘What the heck’s going on? Why are these cameras following everybody?’” she said. Once the cast became accustomed to the cameras and returned to enjoying the weekend, the experience created what Garcia described as “a lot of fun chaos.”
The moment also introduced The Dinah to viewers who had never experienced a gathering of that size for queer women. Nearly 15 years later, Garcia said the show still connects her with a younger generation discovering it on Hulu.
“They’ll come up to me and my friend Whitney because we’re the ones who are always out and bring it up a lot,” she said. “It’s a lot of fun.”
What to Expect From The Dinah in 2026
This year, Barkow and Garcia wanted to create a lineup with “a little something for everyone,” bringing pop, R&B, rock, and old-school hip-hop together across the five-day festival.
Beyond the music, guests can expect morning workouts with Ripped Rosales at Hotel Zoso, a full slate of comedy performances and a new nonalcoholic drink called the Dinah Sapphix Sunrise. Tequila can also be added for anyone who wants it.
The new owners are also introducing a dedicated singles-and-solos event for guests attending alone or hoping to make new connections.
“We have a ton of solo travelers,” Garcia said. “What can we do that would empower and help someone who was coming from another state or another city to not feel alienated or alone?”
Garcia has repeatedly watched solo attendees arrive without knowing anyone and leave with an entirely new group of friends.
“I always say if you come to The Dinah by yourself, you’re leaving with a thousand best friends,” she said. “Those are the vibes.”
Barkow said the new gathering recognizes that The Dinah is both an enormous party and an important community space.
“We don’t want to be just another music festival,” she said. “This is the queer Mecca. It is a queer gathering, and it is beautiful.”
Creating a Festival Where Everyone Feels Welcome
Barkow and Garcia are also working to make the longtime festival more welcoming to transgender, gender-expansive and queer attendees across the community.
“We’re working a lot harder on being a lot more trans-inclusive and gender-expansive and queer-expansive at the event this year,” Barkow said. “We want everyone to feel welcome and comfortable and safe there.”
That mission feels especially urgent as LGBTQ+ people and gathering places continue to face violence. Barkow pointed to the recent targeted attack outside Venture-N, a longtime fixture in Tucson’s queer nightlife scene, as a painful reminder of why spaces like The Dinah remain necessary. The shooting left community members Vincent Anthony Siqueiros, 42, and Cameron Davis Capara, 33, dead before the gunman took his own life. Investigators also found a list containing the addresses of several LGBTQ+ businesses on the shooter’s body, leading Tucson police to classify the attack as a hate crime.
“Yes, we’ve grown a lot. Yes, we’ve made a lot of headway as far as rights go, but we’ve still got a long way to go,” Barkow said. “We need to be able to protect ourselves, and we need society to help protect us. At least there’s this one place in the year where people can go and be together and feel safe.”
For Garcia, that sense of belonging remains the heart of The Dinah, no matter how large the festival becomes.
“It’s a big party, don’t get me wrong,” she said. “But it’s also a sense of community and togetherness, and that’s what we’re trying to share.”
The Dinah runs from Sept. 30 through Oct. 4 in Palm Springs, California. Tickets and additional information are available on The Dinah’s official website.
