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The list presents the largest LGBTQ events (pride parades and festivals) worldwide by attendance. Statistics are announced both by the organizers and authorities (police). In this table, the largest single event by city as well as notable international events such as WorldPride or Europride are indicated. Only referenced statistics are accepted. National parades are generally further supported by nationwide LGBT associations and media organizations. Certain statistics may include celebrations or festivals that may be exclusive of the parade. They are typically held in late June, in commemoration of the 1969 Stonewall riots in Lower Manhattan.
As of 2022, the NYC Pride March in New York City, considered an epicenter of the global LGBTQIA+ sociopolitical ecosystem, is consistently North America's biggest pride parade, with 2.1 million attendees in 2015 and 2.5 million in 2016; [1] in 2018, and again in 2023, [2] attendance was estimated around two million, [3] increasing back up to 2.5 million in 2024. [4] During Stonewall 50 – WorldPride NYC 2019 in Manhattan, over 5 million took part over the final weekend, [5] [6] with an estimated four million in attendance at the parade. [7] [8] There are also Pride parades held in Canada and Mexico.[ citation needed ]
The São Paulo Gay Pride Parade in Brazil is South America's largest event, and was listed by Guinness World Records as the world's largest Pride parade in 2006 with 2.5 million people. [9] It broke the Guinness record in 2009 with four million attendees, [10] with similar numbers to at least 2016, [11] and up to five million attending in 2017. [1] [12] As of 2019, it had three to five million each year. [13] There are Pride parades held as well in Argentina and Chile.[ citation needed ]
Pride Toronto is the largest pride event in Canada while NYC Pride is the largest Pride event in the United States, with Mexico City Pride as the largest Pride event in Mexico. In Asia, Taiwan Pride, Tokyo Rainbow Pride in Japan and Tel Aviv Pride in Israel are Asia's largest pride events. In Oceania, Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in Australia is Oceania’s largest Pride event.[ citation needed ] The March of Pride (Buenos Aires) is the largest Pride event in Argentina while São Paulo Gay Pride Parade is the largest Pride event in Brazil, with Santiago Pride as the largest Pride event in Chile. Paris Pride is the largest Pride event in France while Copenhagen Pride is the largest Pride event in Denmark, with Helsinki Pride as the largest Pride event in Finland.
As of June 2019, the largest LGBTQ events in other parts of the world included:
Brooklyn Liberation March, the largest transgender rights demonstration in LGBTQ history, took place on June 14, 2020, stretching from Grand Army Plaza to Fort Greene, Brooklyn in New York City, and focused on supporting Black transgender lives, drawing an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 participants. [16] [17]
Rank | City | Support | Year | Organizers' statistics | Authorities' statistics | Type |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | New York City | WorldPride | 2019 | 4,000,000 [18] | 5,000,000 [19] | March/Festival |
2 | São Paulo | Local | 2011 | 4,000,000 [20] | Parade | |
3 | Madrid | WorldPride | 2017 | 3,500,000 [21] | 2,300,000 [22] | Festival |
4 | New York City | Local | 2024 | 2,500,000 [4] | March | |
5 | Toronto | Local | 2023 | 2,400,000 [23] | March/Festival | |
6 | Madrid | EuroPride | 2007 | 2,300,000 [24] | Festival | |
7 | New York City | Local | 2016 | 2,100,000+ [25] [26] | 2,500,000 [27] | March |
8 (tie) | Buenos Aires | Local | 2023 | 2,000,000 [28] | March | |
8 (tie) | New York City | Local | 2023 | 2,000,000 [2] | March | |
8 (tie) | New York City | Local | 2018 | 2,000,000 [3] | March | |
11 | San Francisco | Local | 2014 | 1,700,000 [29] | Parade/Festival | |
12 | San Francisco | Local | 2019 | 1,700,000 [30] | Parade/Festival | |
13 | Madrid | Local | 2019 | 1,600,000 [31] | Parade | |
14 | Madrid | Local | 2016 | 1,500,000 [32] | Parade | |
15 (tie) | Cologne | EuroPride | 2002 | 1,400,000 [33] | Parade | |
15 (tie) | Cologne | Local | 2023 | 1,400,000 [34] | Parade/Festival | |
17 | Toronto | Local | 2012 | 1,220,000 [35] | Festival | |
18 (tie) | Cologne | Local | 2022 | 1,200,000 [36] | Festival | |
18 (tie) | Cologne | Local | 2019 | 1,200,000 [36] | Parade | |
20 | Cologne | Local | 2018 | 1,200,000 [37] | Parade | |
21 | Madrid | National | 2012 | 1,200,000 [38] | 700,000 [38] | Parade |
22 | London | National | 2019 | 1,500,000+ [39] | Parade | |
23 | Chicago | Local | 2016 | 1,000,000+ [40] | Parade | |
24 | San Francisco | Local | 2015 | 1,000,000+ [41] | Parade/Festival | |
25 | Berlin | National | 2012 | 1,000,000 | Parade | |
26 | Cologne | Local | 2013 | 1,000,000 [42] | 900,000 [42] | Parade |
27 | Rome | EuroPride | 2011 | 1,000,000 [43] | Festival | |
28 | Paris | National | 2010 | 800,000 [44] | 100,000 [44] | Parade |
29 | Houston | Local | 2017 | 750,000 [45] | Parade | |
30 | London | Local | 2014 | 750,000 [46] | Parade | |
31 | Boston | Local | 2019 | 750,000 [47] | Parade | |
32 | Rio de Janeiro | Local | 2011 | 700,000 [48] | Parade | |
33 | Amsterdam | Local | 2014 | 560,000 [49] | 450,000 [50] | Parade |
34 | Denver | Local | 2019 | 525,000 [51] | Parade & Festival | |
35 | Columbus | Local | 2019 | 750,000 [52] | Parade and Festival | |
36 | Buenos Aires | National | 2019 | 500,000 [53] [54] | Parade | |
37 | Rio de Janeiro | Local | 2010 | 500,000 [55] | Parade | |
38 | Mexico City | National | 2010 | 500,000 [56] | Parade | |
39 | Brighton | Local | 2018 | 450,000 [57] | 450,000 [58] [59] | Parade & Festival |
40 | Los Angeles | Local | 2015 | 400,000 [60] | Parade | |
41 | Minneapolis | Local | 2016 | 400,000 [61] | Festival | |
42 | San Diego | Local | 2019 | 360,000 [62] | Parade/Festival | |
43 | Berlin | Local | 2022 | 350,000 [63] | Parade/Festival | |
44 | Atlanta | Local | 2018 | 300,000 [64] | Parade & Festival | |
45 | Sydney | Local | 2020 | 300,000 [65] [66] Largest: 500,000 (1993) [67] [68] | Parade | |
46 | Montreal | Local | 2012 | 290,000 [69] | Parade | |
47 | Melbourne | Local | 2020 | 261,806 [70] | 264,895 [71] | Parade & Festival |
48 | Tel Aviv | Local | 2019 | 250,000 [72] | Parade & Festival | |
49 | St. Petersburg | Local | 2019 | 265,000 [73] | Parade & Festival | |
50 | Rome | WorldPride | 2000 | 250,000 [74] | Parade | |
51 | New Orleans | Local | 2019 | 250,000 [75] | Parade & Festival | |
52 | Tel Aviv | Local | 2018 | 250,000 [76] | Parade | |
53 | Charlotte | Local | 2019 | 200,000 [77] [78] | Parade & Festival | |
54 | Belo Horizonte | Local | 2019 | 200,000 [79] | 200,000 [79] | Parade |
55 | Buenos Aires | National | 2012 | 200,000 [80] | Parade | |
56 | Vienna | National | 2023 | 300,000 | Parade | |
57 | Tokyo | Local | 2019 | 200,000 [81] [82] | Parade & Festival | |
58 | Taipei | National | 2019 | 200,000 [83] | Parade | |
59 | Miami | Local | 2018 | 180,000 [84] | Parade & Festival | |
60 | Hamburg | Local | 2018 | 180,000 [85] | Parade | |
61 | Munich | Local | 2018 | 160,000 [86] | Parade | |
62 | Palermo | National | 2013 | 150,000 [87] | 135,000 [88] | Parade |
63 | Brussels | Local | 2023 | 150,000 [89] | 100,000 [90] | Parade & Festival |
64 | Ottawa | Local | 2019 | 125,000 [91] | Festival | |
65 | Copenhagen | Local | 2014 | 120,000 [92] | Parade | |
66 | Seoul | National | 2018 | 120,000 [93] | Parade & Festival | |
67 | Brussels | National | 2022 | 120,000 [90] | Parade & Festival | |
68 | Quezon City | Local | 2023 | 110,752 [94] | 110,752 [94] | Festival |
69 | Santiago | Local | 2021 | 100,000[ citation needed ] | March | |
70 | Helsinki | Local | 2022 | 100,000[ citation needed ] | March |
A pride parade is an event celebrating lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) social and self-acceptance, achievements, legal rights, and pride. The events sometimes also serve as demonstrations for legal rights such as same-sex marriage. Most occur annually throughout the Western world, while some take place every June to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City, which was a pivotal moment in modern LGBTQ social movements. The parades seek to create community and honor the history of the movement. In 1970, pride and protest marches were held in Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco around the first anniversary of Stonewall. The events became annual and grew internationally. In 2019, New York and the world celebrated the largest international Pride celebration in history: Stonewall 50 - WorldPride NYC 2019, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, with five million attending in Manhattan alone. Pride parades occur in urban locations worldwide, incl. cities or urban areas in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Finland, France, Israel, Japan, Mexico and the United States.
The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras or Sydney Mardi Gras is an event in Sydney, New South Wales attended by hundreds of thousands of people from around Australia and overseas. One of the largest LGBT festivals in the world, Mardi Gras is the largest Pride event in Oceania. It includes a variety of events such as the Sydney Mardi Gras Parade and Party, Bondi Beach Drag Races, Harbour Party, the academic discussion panel Queer Thinking, Mardi Gras Film Festival, as well as Fair Day, which attracts 70,000 people to Victoria Park, Sydney.
Christopher Street Day (CSD) is an annual European LGBTQ+ celebration and demonstration held in various cities across Europe for the rights of LGBTQ+ people, and against discrimination and exclusion. It is Germany's and Switzerland's counterpart to Gay Pride or Pride Parades. Austria calls their Pride Parade Rainbow Parade. The most prominent CSD events are Berlin Pride, CSD Hamburg, and CSD Cologne in Germany, and CSD Zürich in Switzerland.
São Paulo LGBTQ Pride Parade is an annual gay pride parade that has taken place in Avenida Paulista, in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, since 1997. It is South America's largest Pride parade, and is listed by Guinness World Records as the biggest pride parade in the world starting in 2006 with 2.5 million people. They broke the Guinness record in 2009 with four million attendees. They have kept the title from 2006 to at least 2016. They had five million attendants in 2017. As of 2019 it has three to five million attendants each year. In 2019, it was also the second larger event of the city of São Paulo in terms of total revenue and the first in terms of daily revenue. In 2010, the city hall of São Paulo invested 1 million reais in the parade. According to the LGBT app Grindr, the gay parade of the city was elected the best in the world.
Taiwan Pride is the annual LGBTQ pride parade in Taiwan. The parade was first held in 2003. Although joined by groups from all over the country, the primary location has always been the capital city of Taipei. The parade held in October 2019 attracted more than 200,000 participants, making it the largest gay pride event in East Asia. As of 2019, it is the largest in Asia ahead of Tel Aviv Pride in Israel, which is the largest in the Middle East. Taiwan LGBT Pride Community, the organizer of Taiwan LGBTQ Pride Parade, holds the parade on the last Saturday of October.
The NYC Pride March is an annual event celebrating the LGBTQ community in New York City. The largest pride parade and the largest pride event in the world, the NYC Pride March attracts tens of thousands of participants and millions of sidewalk spectators each June, and carries spiritual and historical significance for the worldwide LGBTQIA+ community and its advocates. Entertainer Madonna stated in 2024, "Aside from my birthday, New York Pride is the most important day of the year." The route through Lower Manhattan traverses south on Fifth Avenue, through Greenwich Village, passing the Stonewall National Monument, site of the June 1969 riots that launched the modern movement for LGBTQ+ rights.
Pride is the promotion of the self-affirmation, dignity, equality, and increased visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people as a social group. Pride, as opposed to shame and social stigma, is the predominant outlook that bolsters most LGBT rights movements. Pride has lent its name to LGBTQ-themed organizations, institutes, foundations, book titles, periodicals, a cable TV channel, and the Pride Library.
Manchester Pride is a charity that campaigns for LGBTQ+ equality across the United Kingdom, predominantly in Greater Manchester. The Charity offers dialogue, training, research and policy analysis, advocacy and outreach activities focusing on LGBTQ+ rights.
WorldPride is a series of international LGBT pride events coordinated by InterPride; they are hosted in conjunction with local LGBT pride festivals, with host cities selected via bids voted on during InterPride's annual general meetings. Its core events include opening and closing ceremonies, a pride parade, and an LGBT human rights conference.
Pedro Julio Serrano is a gay and HIV+ human rights activist and president of Puerto Rico Para Todes, a non-profit LGBTQ+ and social justice advocacy organization founded in 2003. He is a former advisor to former New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark Viverito and former San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz. He served, for more than three years, as executive director of Programa Vida and Clínica Transalud of the Municipality of San Juan. He now works as Director of Development at Waves Ahead.
The Berlin Pride Celebration, also known as Christopher Street Day Berlin, or CSD Berlin, is a pride parade and festival held in the second half of July each year in Berlin, Germany to celebrate the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) people and their allies. Since 1979, the event has been held each year. Berlin Pride is one of the largest gay and lesbian organized events in Germany and one of the biggest in Europe. Its aim is to demonstrate for equal rights and equal treatment for LGBT people, as well as celebrate the pride in Gay and Lesbian Culture.
There have been pride parades in South Africa celebrating LGBT pride since 1990. South African pride parades were historically used for political advocacy protesting against legal discrimination against LGBT people, and for the celebration of equality before the law after the apartheid era. They are increasingly used for political advocacy against LGBT hate crimes, such as the so-called corrective rape of lesbians in townships, and to remember victims thereof.
Madrid Pride, popularly known in Spanish as the Orgullo Gay de Madrid or La Noche de Patos and its acronym MADO, is the annual LGBT pride festival hosted at Chueca neighbourhood in the centre of Madrid, during the weekend immediately after June 28, International Day of LGBT Pride.
Dayenu is an LGBTQ+ organisation based in Sydney, Australia. The word Dayenu means "enough" in Hebrew, and the group uses it to mean that they have had "enough" of homophobia.
Stonewall 50 – WorldPride NYC 2019 was a series of LGBTQ events and celebrations in June 2019, marking the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots. It was also the first time WorldPride was held in the United States. Held primarily in the metropolitan New York City area, the theme for the celebrations and educational events was "Millions of moments of Pride." The celebration was the largest LGBTQ event in history, with an official estimate of 5 million attending Pride weekend in Manhattan alone, with an estimated 4 million in attendance at the NYC Pride March. The twelve-hour parade included 150,000 pre-registered participants among 695 groups.
Critical pride is the name of several annual protest demonstrations of LGBT people held in Madrid and several other Spanish cities. The organizers of critical pride demonstrations present them as an alternative to the original pride parades and festivals, which they consider depoliticized and institutionalized.
Global Pride was an online LGBT Pride event, which took place on June 27, 2020. Organized as a response to the international COVID-19 pandemic, which forced the cancellation of most traditional LGBTQ pride events due to social distancing restrictions on large public gatherings, the event featured livestreamed social and cultural programming organized by various LGBT community groups and pride committees around the world. According to a list maintained by the European Pride Organizers Association (EPOA), nearly 500 Pride events have been cancelled around the world.
The Pink Loerie Mardi Gras and Arts Festival is an annual LGBTQ Pride carnival event and parade held in Knysna, a coastal township in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Events include their version of the Wigstock drag queen festival, a bear fest, athletic events, and an art festival. It is one of the country's largest LGBTQ events. Since its start in 2000 it has grown to be a significant event for the town culminating in the grand finale of Pink Loerie, Knysna Pride parade and its 1000-person after-party held on the final weekend with floats, performers, and DJs. The Knysna loerie is a green bird but the color pink has a long association with LGBTQ culture.
The LGBT community of Sydney, in New South Wales, is the largest in Australia and has a firm place as one of the iconic gay cities of the contemporary world. In a 2013 Pew Research poll, 79% of Australians agreed that homosexuality should be accepted by society, making it the fifth most supportive country in the survey behind Spain (88%), Germany (87%), Canada and the Czech Republic. With a long history of LGBT rights activism and the annual three-week-long Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras festival, Sydney is one of the most gay-friendly cities in Australia and in the world.