5 places to celebrate Pride in 2022

Pride is an ongoing global party these days. It’s an excuse for everyone to take to the streets in the most outrageous outfits to celebrate the freedom to just be themselves. But this festival has a long – over 50 years! – history in the struggle for equal rights for the LGBTQI+ community, and this is often forgotten.

It all started with a riot outside the Stonewall Inn in New York, after the police raided a bar frequented by the community one time too many. The following year, that same community came back to those very streets to march and celebrate the day that they stood up for themselves; the year they asserted their pride; the fact they weren’t going to live in the shame that society had put on them anymore.

Now it’s not only the major cities – New York, London, Madrid, Paris, Sydney – that celebrate Pride, it’s people in small towns, tiny communities, different races, different gender identities, all with their own unique issues, all celebrating their pride in themselves as human beings. And if those celebrations include body glitter and champagne, then so be it!

Tel Aviv Pride (Shutterstock)

In a region not known for its tolerance of LGBTQI+ people, Tel Aviv is an oasis of acceptance, where the whole city gets drawn into what the locals call ‘Love Day’. Expect a huge, daring parade with plenty of flesh on show followed by a park-based afterparty and a weekend of packed-out events.

Celebrating Pride in Sweden (Shutterstock)

Sweden’s main Pride event is in Stockholm (1–7 Aug), but travel north and you can join in on the Pride of the Sámi people, the 100,000-strong indigenous population of the Sápmi region in northern Scandinavia. It’s been going since 2014 and is symbolic for the LGBTQI+ Sámi, whose culture is less liberal than that of the Swedes.

When is a Pride event a retreat? When it’s an ‘inclusive and transformative weekend for the LGBTQI+ community’ at Wasing Park Estate. Instead of parades and drunken revelry, expect wild swimming, wellness workshops, sweat lodges, yoga, comedy and drag performers.

Gathering in Hyde Park before Trans Pride (Shutterstock)

This trans-focussed event at London’s Wellington Arch channels the original protest agenda of Pride marches, which is pertinent at a time when trans rights are being attacked on all sides. This year everyone is being encouraged to wear flowers to honour the legacy of the non-binary, transgender, gender non-conforming and intersex people who came before.

Protesters during Reclaim Pride, London (Shutterstock)

With Pride events having evolved into huge commercial exercises over the years, human rights campaigners worldwide have backed a return to the core values of the original Pride marches, with no corporate sponsors, an emphasis on protest and plenty of dressed-up bad behaviour.