The stage is set for the 49th annual LA Pride festival and parade this weekend, starting with a free opening ceremony from 6 p.m. to midnight tonight at West Hollywood Park.

Crews worked in the park throughout the morning to build the stage where Paula Abdul will perform at 10:30 p.m., and prepare for the tens of thousands of visitors expected throughout the three-day celebration.

The festival will be held from noon to 1 a.m. Saturday and Sunday on San Vicente Boulevard and in West Hollywood Park, and the parade will take place from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sunday along Santa Monica Boulevard, between Fairfax Avenue and Doheny Drive.

Another free addition to this year’s schedule is Pride on the Boulevard, located on Santa Monica Boulevard between Robertson Boulevard and Hancock Avenue, which will include local artists, DJs, beer gardens, and a health and wellness fair. It will be open from noon to 7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

“It really is in response to growing crowds and people who are coming to West Hollywood to celebrate Pride,” said Jeff Consoletti, in his 10th year working on Pride after joining Christopher Street West as a volunteer in 2009. “We only had so much space the past few years when we were in our current footprint in West Hollywood Park and San Vicente Boulevard, so we worked hand-in-hand with the city of West Hollywood to expand to Santa Monica Boulevard.”

This year’s Pride will help organizers determine how to approach its 50th anniversary next year.

“It’s such an important landmark, 50 years of Pride in Los Angeles,” said Jake Brooks-Harris, in his first year on the Christopher Street West board. “Los Angeles has such an incredibly rich LGBTQ history, so we really want to make sure the 50th anniversary is reflective of that.”

The annual events have become a joyous celebration with music, art and drinking, but organizers also work to commemorate Pride’s roots in the fight for civil rights. Concession stands in West Hollywood Park will pay homage to the Black Cat Tavern. In 1967, demonstrators gathered at the Silver Lake bar to protest a police raid that had taken place shortly after midnight New Year’s Day. Fourteen of the Black Cat’s LGBT patrons were arrested and charged with assault and public lewdness. Pride this year will also recognize the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which took place in New York City in response to a police raid targeting LGBT people at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. The riots spurred the decades of LGBT activism that followed.

“Current generations that are growing up now, and generations to come, will get to live in a world where there’s no doubt that a black man can be president, that a woman has the right to vote, that a person of Latino heritage can speak Spanish in their school without being punished and that same sex couples can get married,” said Estevan Montemayor, Christopher Street West board president. “And hopefully very soon, that transgender people have the full rights in our federal laws that they deserve. That is the world that we’re building.”