London Pride

Pride in London logo

London Pride is an annual event in London, comprising a march or parade in central London, together with a rally or festival, and sometimes other events.

Gay Pride Marches, subsequently re-branded as Pride Marches and now Pride Parades (see Pride) have been held in London since the early 1970s, normally on the nearest Saturday to 28 June, the anniversary of the Stonewall riots.

Organisers

London Pride has been run by a succession of different bodies, and the changes between them account for much of the character of the event in each period.

The 1970s and 1980s

In the early years there was no single organising body. The Gay Liberation Front organised the first marches in 1971 and 1972, and the Campaign for Homosexual Equality took on the 1973 march; thereafter Pride was arranged by a succession of volunteer committees, and events were held intermittently rather than in an unbroken annual sequence. By the end of the 1980s the event was in the hands of the London Lesbian and Gay Pride Committee.

The Pride Trust

Through the 1990s the event was run by the Pride Trust, which had itself been set up in about 1992 after the previous organisers went bankrupt. It staged large free festivals in Brockwell Park, Victoria Park and Clapham Common, with line-ups drawing performers including Jimmy Somerville, Boy George and Bananarama; by 1997 Pride claimed to be the largest free music event in the world, attracting more than a quarter of a million people and some £200,000 in sponsorship from companies including United Airlines, Holsten Pils and Evian.

Teddy Witherington joined the London Lesbian and Gay Pride Committee in 1990 and served as its executive director until July 1997, and was the Pride Trust's company secretary and festival producer; he was subsequently appointed executive director of San Francisco Pride, and moved to the United States to take up the post.

In November 1997 the Trust went into voluntary liquidation. It had for some years managed accumulated losses by persuading suppliers and sponsors to pay in advance for the following year, and had entered 1997 carrying a deficit of more than £100,000; that year's festival was itself over budget by around £80,000, with further costs including £40,000 of lost equipment and reduced payments from sponsors. The chair, Rachel Smith, said that Pride needed a clean slate rather than a deficit deferred for another year. Witherington attributed the collapse to power struggles within the Pride Trust and to a failure to secure new sponsorship over the preceding months.

The crisis exposed a division over what Pride should be. The Trust's directors hoped to build a new community-based, not-for-profit body to run a scaled-down festival, while its auditor, John Holding, argued that an event on that scale could no longer be run by volunteers and called for a professional consortium of businesses – warning that if the community did not organise itself, purely commercial interests would take control. A commercially run alternative, Summer Rites, had already been established by Kim Lucas in the mid-1990s.

A march took place in 1998, but the festival was cancelled for the first time in the event's twenty-six years, a newly formed body called Pride Events UK having been unable to afford to stage it.

London Mardi Gras, 1999–2003

In 1999 the event was taken over by a consortium of twenty-two gay businesses and prominent individuals, led by Kelvin Sollis, publisher of the Pink Paper and Boyz, which took shareholdings in a new company and renamed the event London Mardi Gras. The veteran promoters Harvey Goldsmith and the Mean Fiddler group were involved in staging it, and a manager, Anthony McNeill, was brought over from the Sydney Mardi Gras. Members of the consortium included John Miskelly, then chairman of Stonewall, and Boo Armstrong, chairwoman of the Lesbian and Gay Switchboard; the intention was to reinvest profits in a larger event the following year.

For the first time, admission was charged for the festival, held in Finsbury Park: £12 on the day, £10 in advance and £7 for concessions. Some 38,000 tickets had been sold by the eve of the event, which had been budgeted at around £1 million for a capacity of 65,000. The parade itself remained free, leaving Hyde Park at noon and passing through Piccadilly, Trafalgar Square and Victoria, with the openly gay MPs Stephen Twigg and Ben Bradshaw and the sports minister Tony Banks taking part.

The change was strongly contested. Peter Tatchell of OutRage! said that year's events had been hijacked, depoliticised and commercialised, and that Pride had been taken over by gay business interests; he and others left the parade for an open-air alternative in Old Compton Street in Soho, where a nail bomb had been detonated at the Admiral Duncan three months earlier. The march slogan, "Equality through diversity", avoided the contested questions of the age of consent and Section 28, and Tatchell criticised the organisers for making no reference to the thirtieth anniversary of the Stonewall riots. The festival programme discouraged political chanting, one spokesman saying the event was more about dancers and costumes than placards.

The organisers defended the change. Their spokesman, Dominic Fenton, described the event as a parade rather than a march, argued that assembling 65,000 lesbian and gay people was in itself political, and pointed out that as a free event Pride had lurched from one financial crisis to the next. The broadcaster Simon Fanshawe was among those who said the new organisers should be given a chance.

The company moved the festival to Hyde Park in 2003 but was unable to meet the cost, and ceased to run the event.

Pride London, 2004–2012

Pride London, a registered charity founded in March 2004, took over the event and restored the political rally in Trafalgar Square immediately after the parade. Its first chief executive was Jason Pollock. The first year drew a little over 30,000 people; the organisation went on to stage Europride in 2006 and, following a successful bid accepted by InterPride at its Vancouver conference in October 2008, World Pride in 2012. The last-minute scaling back of that event brought widespread dissatisfaction and proved to be the charity's last year as organiser.

Pride in London, 2013 onwards

Following the difficulties of 2012, the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, invited community bodies to bid to run future Prides. In January 2013 it was announced that the community interest company London LGBT Community Pride had been awarded the right to run Pride for five years from 2013. The company operates under the name Pride in London, and has been chaired in this period by Michael Salter-Church and Alison Camps.

The organisation has itself attracted criticism. Stonewall withdrew its support in 2018, citing a lack of diversity, and the extent of corporate sponsorship has remained contested, with some community groups declining to take part in recent years.

London Pride year by year

More information needed to complete this section.

• 1971: There was a small march in 1971, organised by the GLF youth Group, starting with a Gay Day in Hyde Park and then a march down Oxford Street and Regents Street to Trafalgar Square. There were about 200 marchers and a large number of police.
• 1972: The first Gay Pride March under that name was held on the 1st of July 1972 and was organised by GLF. The date was chosen to be the nearest Saturday to the Stonewall riots of 1969. An estimated number of between 70 and 200 people took part in the march itself and maybe as many as 700 in the whole event, including the rally and picnic in Hyde Park.
• 1973: this year's Pride March was organised by CHE . An estimated 300 people took part .
• 1976: Gay Pride week held in August. Tom Robinson performed Glad to be Gay! The number on the Saturday march was reported as between 800 and 2,000 .
• 1977: the Pride march and picnic was on Saturday 25th June and started at Temple Place, Embankment. Gay Pride Week lasted until 2 July.

  

  Gay Pride Committee letter 1977

• 1978: the Pride march was on Saturday 8th July and started in Sloane Square went via Earls Court, ending at Shepherd's Bush.
• 1979: the Pride march was on Saturday 30th June and started at Temple Place, Embankment and marched to Hyde Park for an open air concert. Featured in two television documentary programmes; World in Action on ITV and Inside Story on BBC. .
• 1980: Approximately 3,000 marched. Frank Egan was arrested for having a vegetable cutter in his hat (as part of his drag costume). Clashes with the police occurred in Malet Street.
• 1981: the Pride March was moved to Huddersfield for one year only, in protest against police harassment of the Gemini Club.
• 1982: a very wet parade on the last Saturday (June 26th) in London. Started at Speakers' Corner, then through Piccadilly Circus ending up at the University of London Union in Malet Street for a dance. Capital Gay (2.7.82) reported over 1,200 attended and suffered torrential rain.
• 1983: held on 2 July starting in Hyde Park and ending at the University of London Union in Malet Street. Capital Gay (8.7.83) reported 2,000 attended 'on happiest Pride parade for years'.
• 1984: held on 30 June.
• 1985: the march went from Hyde Park to the Jubilee Gardens. The number of marchers went up to an estimated 15,000, including mining communities showing solidarity in return for gay support during the miners' strike. Capital Gay estimated attendance at 10,000 and called it, “the biggest gathering of homosexuals Britain has ever seen.”
• 1986: March ends in Kennington Park.
• 1987: March Sloane Square to Shepherd's Bush Green on 8th July,

Gay Pride programme 1978

.

• 1988: about 40,000 people attended Pride, protesting about Section 28.
• 1989: festival in Kennington Park; CHE and GALHA jointly issued a commemorative plastic bag entitling the holder to half-price admission to the Winter Fair.
• 1990: the annual parade went from Victoria via Trafalgar Square, Whitehall, and the Houses of Parliament, and down Kennington Road
• 1991: Estimated 25,000 people joined the march from central London to Kennington Park, up to 45,000 people were estimated to have dropped in on events in the park
• 1992: (Europride)
• 1993: festival in Brockwell Park
• 1994: festival in Brockwell Park
• 1995: march from Hyde Park to Westminster; festival in Victoria Park.
• 1996: march from Hyde Park to Westminster; festival in Clapham Common ( on 6th July).
• 1997: march from Hyde Park to Westminster; festival in Clapham Common.
• 1999: festival ("London Mardi Gras") in Finsbury Park.
• 2000: march from Hyde Park to Victoria; festival ("London Mardi Gras") in Finsbury Park.
• 2001: festival ("London Mardi Gras") in Finsbury Park.
• 2002: festival in Hackney Marshes.
• 2003: festival in Hyde Park.
• 2004: march from Hyde Park to Victoria; rally in Trafalgar Square; festival ("Big Gay Out") in Finsbury Park
• 2005: March from Hyde Park, rally in Trafalgar Square.
• 2006: (Europride)
• 2012: (World Pride): The Pride Parade started as in previous years from Baker Street, but the start time was unexpectely changed from 1pm to 11am, and vehicles were banned. The party in Trafalgar Square went ahead, but a number of other events on the day were cancelled. Peter Tatchell has reported that the change in start time was intended to reduce the numbers taking part but in the event there are thought to have been 25,000 people on the march, the biggest number ever.
• 2013: Some reports suggest that up to half a million people took part in the Pride in London Parade, a march from Baker Street via Oxford Street and Regent Street to Whitehall, followed by a festival ("Summer Rites") in Shoreditch Park.
• 2014: Pride in London 2014 again featured a parade from Baker Street to Whitehall.
• 2015: the parade for Pride in London 2015 (again from Baker Street to Whitehall) was said to be the biggest ever.
• 2016: the parade this year started from Portland Place, on Saturday 25 June.
• 2017: Saturday 8 July
• 2018: Saturday 7 July Route from Portland Place, along Oxford Circus and Regent Street to Piccadilly Circus, before heading through Pall Mall and passing Trafalgar Square to Whitehall.
• 2019: Saturday 6 July More than 300 groups and floats travelled from Portland Place Station to Trafalgar Square.
• 2020 and 2021: Cancelled due to nationwide restrictions to control the spread of Covid-19 virus
• 2022: An 'alternative' Pride event was held on 1 July to mark 50 years since the first Gay Pride march in London. Some of the original marchers from 1972 took part. The main commercial Pride march took place the following day.
• 2023: Supporters of the environmental protest group Just Stop Oil halted the Pride parade for about twenty minutes, in a protest against the participation of commercial sponsors; paint was sprayed over one corporate float. Seven people were arrested and five were later charged. Two activists tried at Southwark Crown Court in connection with the protest were found not guilty of criminal damage in August 2025.
• 2025: Pride in London took place on Saturday 5 July 2025, from midday to 6pm. The parade began at Hyde Park Corner and proceeded through Piccadilly Circus, Haymarket and Cockspur Street, ending at Whitehall Place.
• 2026: Pride in London took place on Saturday 4 July 2026. The parade set off from Hyde Park Corner at midday and followed Piccadilly to Piccadilly Circus, then south down Haymarket and past Trafalgar Square, finishing on Whitehall. Organisers reported around 35,000 marchers from more than 600 groups, and estimated attendance at between 1.5 and 1.8 million. Six stages were spread across central London: the main stage in Trafalgar Square, headlined by MNEK, together with a Trans and Non-Binary stage in Soho Square, a Global Majority stage in Golden Square, a cabaret stage in Dean Street, a Women's stage in Leicester Square, and a family area in Victoria Embankment Gardens. The parade and all six stages were free to attend, although ticketed grandstand seating was sold at Piccadilly and Cockspur Street.