Tāmaki Makaurau's rainbow community says it is hopeful the final major events of the Auckland Pride calendar can go ahead on Friday.
The Auckland Pride march last year. Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
The region will move to Covid-19 alert level 2 at 6am tomorrow, with the rest of the country going down to level 1 at the same time.
Auckland's restrictions will then be reassessed again at the end of the week.
Director Max Tweedie said Pride has been disrupted more than most - with events postponed into mid-April - but organisers are making sure all events could eventually take place safely.
"This is not our most ideal situation, we would have loved to have wrapped it all in a month but this is the nature of events in 2020 and 2021.
"So we're really stoked that we can still put these major events on and that none of these big ones that we've been really looking forward to have been cancelled," Tweedie said.
Auckland Pride and Proud Centres were confident the IMAN Ball on Saturday 13 March and the SPLASH Pool Party on Sunday 14 March could be held again at alert level 1.
He said organisers were "so excited at the prospect of hosting our two final major events next weekend" in order to showcase the "incredible talents of our communities and bring us together to celebrate who we are".
The city's rainbow community had been particularly good at following Covid-19 precautions, even under alert level 1, Tweedie said.
"It's obviously been a bit disruptive, but our community has been really good at following the guidelines that had been put in place ... we've seen high levels of compliance with scanning QR codes at our Pride events and registering in advance with our free event, so we've been really encouraged by that."
