This year at ESSENCE Festival of Culture, HBCU pride is present in full force.

Walk through the Convention Center or catch the energy outside the Superdome, and it is impossible to miss the sheer number of Black college students and alumni who treat this weekend less like a festival and more like a homecoming.

For Xavier University senior Malik Faulker, that feeling developed early. Growing up 20 minutes from the Superdome, he remembers standing outside as a kid just to catch the music drifting from the arena. Now that he is old enough to walk through the doors himself, the sounds resonate in a new way.

“This is home. This is us,” Faulkner says, describing what it’s like to finally experience ESSENCE Festival as an adult.

Not everyone’s connection is local, though. Spelman College junior Journee Whitfield made the trip for the longtime event from Atlanta, viewing the weekend as equal parts celebration and networking opportunity. Sitting in on panels featuring Black women across beauty, media, and tech has given her something she didn’t expect.

“My seat at the table is already being built,” Whitfield says, reflecting on what it means to see women who look like her thriving in the industries she hopes to enter.

Howard University alum Denise Johnson has turned her ESSENCE Festival trips into an annual tradition with her college friends. A decade after graduation, the pact she made with her Howard circle still holds.

“No matter where life took us, we’d meet in New Orleans every July,” Denise says, explaining how the reunion keeps them rooted in the community they built as students, from catching up on life throughout the weekend and patroning Black-owned businesses side by side. 

Morehouse College alum Xavier Brown says the experience still pulls him back every year. While the Evening Concert Series dominates most conversations, it’s the Global Black Economic Forum activation that left the biggest impression on him this time, particularly hearing Black men discuss ownership and legacy building in ways that reshaped how he thinks about his own future.

Whether it’s a panel, Black-owned vendor booth, or a reunion on the calendar every year, these proud HBCU scholars and alumni represent something bigger than their individual schools when they touch down from July 3rd to the 5th. ESSENCE Festival remains something more than a festival for them. It is a family reunion, a classroom, and a celebration, all in one.