Fire Island Invasion 2026

The Fire Island Invasion is the most legendary event in Fire Island's social calendar and one of the most distinctive events in American gay culture — an annual procession of elaborately costumed drag queens and community members from Cherry Grove to Fire Island Pines, held around July 4th weekend since the 1970s. The Invasion began as a drag protest after an incident in which members of the Cherry Grove community were refused service at the Pines Pavilion, and the original act of arriving en masse — by water taxi, in full drag, at the Pines harbour — has been repeated and elaborated annually ever since. The spectacle of the arriving boats, the costumed invaders descending on the Pines dock, and the reaction of the Pines crowd (some years prepared, some years not) has made the Invasion one of the most photographed and most discussed events in the Fire Island summer. The Invasion is simultaneously a celebration, a political act, and a piece of community theatre that has been running for fifty years. It is the single event that most precisely captures the relationship between Cherry Grove and the Pines — the older, more democratic, more queer community and the newer, more affluent, more male-dominated one — and the love-and-mockery that characterises that relationship.