Pride Month photos show celebrations around the world

Emily Mae Czachor
Sat, June 28, 2025



Pride Month photos show celebrations around the world

Wrapped in multicolored flags and waving protest signs, revelers across the globe have gathered throughout June for Pride events — a monthlong celebration of the LGBTQ community that also symbolizes an ongoing fight for equal rights and inclusion.

The roots of Pride Month stretch back to June 28, 1969, when a police raid on New York City's Stonewall Inn, a gay bar, led to several nights of clashes with the bar's LGBTQ patrons and others, which became known as the Stonewall Riots or Stonewall Uprising — a demonstration that's now considered the start of the LGBTQ rights movement. Marches took place in Manhattan, Chicago and San Francisco to mark the anniversary of Stonewall the following June, and, over time, it became an annual event in more and more cities. Pride Month first gained federal recognition in 1999 from then-President Bill Clinton.

Pride marches and festivals have been taking place throughout the month in different parts of the U.S. and around the world, and New York's 2025 Pride march, honoring the legacy of Stonewall, is scheduled for Sunday. Here is a look at some of the events from Washington, D.C., to Kathmandu and beyond.

People march in the L.A. Pride Parade on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles on June 8, 2025. / Credit: Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

The 25th Anniversary Kentuckiana Pride Festival Parade was held on June 21, 2025 in Louisville, Kentucky. / Credit: / Getty Images

A heart-shaped sign with the colors of the Pride flag is seen near the Pike Place Market in Seattle, Washington, on June 25, 2025. / Credit: JUAN MABROMATA/AFP via Getty Images

Bella Bautista, a trans woman, attends the World Pride Parade on June 7, 2025, in Washington, D.C. / Credit: Jacquelyn Martin / AP


Participants ride motorcycles during the 2025 L.A. Pride Parade on June 8, 2025 in Los Angeles. / Credit: / Getty Images

Activists and allies marched for equality in the Motor City Pride Parade in Detroit on June 8, 2025. / Credit: Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Spectators along Clarendon Street watch the Boston Pride Parade on June 14, 2025. / Credit: John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

People march down Boylston Street at the Boston Pride Parade on June 14, 2025. / Credit: John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images


A motorcyclist and passenger zoom through the streets of Solvang, California, for the city's 2025 Pride parade. / Credit: George Rose/Getty Images

Activists and supporters of the LGBTQ community participate in a Pride walk in Kolkata, India, on June 22, 2025. / Credit: Bikas Das / AP

The Coliseum in Rome during the city's Pride parade on June 14, 2025. / Credit: Antonio Masiello / Getty Images

A demonstrator holds a sign that says


People wave umbrellas to form a monumental rainbow-colored flag in Zocalo Square as they take part in the LGBTQ+ Pride parade in Mexico City, June 22, 2025. / Credit: Mariana Hernandez Ampudia / REUTERSMore

Marchers carry rainbow flags at the Kentuckiana Pride Parade at Waterfront Park on June 21, 2025 in Louisville, Kentucky. / Credit: Sarah Anne Cohen/WireImage/Getty Images

The annual Pride Parade in Athens, Greece, on June 14, 2025. / Credit: ARIS MESSINIS/AFP via Getty Images

In Athens, a 2025 Pride parade attendee carries a sign that reads


A 2025 Pride procession passes the Holy Cross Church in Warsaw, Poland. The march brought together thousands of advocates for LGBTQ rights in a country where marked intolerance toward the community is largely attributed to the church's cultural influence. / Credit: Aleksei Fokin/SOPA Images/LightRocket via 

In Bosnia, the LGBTQ community and allies wave Pride flags and signage at Sarajevo's annual Pride parade on June 14, 2024. / Credit: ELVIS BARUKCIC/AFP via Getty Images

Attendees of the 7th Nepal Pride Parade wave carry a rainbow flag while marching through Kathmandu, Nepal, on June 14, 2025. / Credit: Subaas Shrestha/NurPhoto via Getty Images

A view of the streets of Mexico City's Zocalo, where rainbow-colored laser lights are projected to commemorate International Pride Month and Day. The goal is to combat and eradicate discrimination, racism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, and violence in all its forms that these groups face daily, in Mexico City, Mexico, on June 27, 2025. / Credit: Gerardo Vieyra/NurPhoto via Getty ImagesMore

People join the Pride Parade in Quezon City, Metro Manila on June 28, 2025. / Credit: JAM STA ROSA/AFP via Getty Images

People wave a rainbow EU flag as they take part in the Budapest Pride parade in Budapest downtown on June 28, 2025, as the capital's municipality organised this march by the LGBTQ community, celebrating freedom, in a move to circumvent a law that allows police to ban LGBTQ marches. / Credit: ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP via Getty Images

LGBTQ Pride can't be canceled
They tried hard, but... it came! Somehow or other, it came just the same!


Brent Hartinger and Michael Jensen
Creator of Brent and Michael Are Going Places
Updated Mon, June 9, 2025 




Pride — which is celebrated every June — means different things to different people. For some, it’s a celebration of hard-won rights and recognition for LGBTQ people. For others, it’s a party: a chance to see and be seen.

For many in the “older” generation, Pride has to do with the resilience and determination it took to make it through some pretty tough times.

Basically, we’re proud we survived all the crap that’s been thrown our way.

Honestly, most of us thought the worst of those hard times were behind us, at least in the United States.

Alas, it was not to be.

But if people think our community will now roll over and play dead, they know even less about us than we thought.

Since the two of us left the United States in 2017 to become digital nomads, we’ve now celebrated LGBTQ Pride all over the world — in cities as different as Istanbul, Sarajevo, and Oslo.

In Istanbul, which used to have the largest Pride parade in the Islamic world, Pride is now banned. Despite that, brave activists still march, using social media alerts to evade the police pursuing them with water-guns and tear gas.

In 2021, we joined them, and when the police finally caught up with us, we got tear-gassed right along with everyone else.

Things were better the following year in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

But there was enough local opposition to LGBTQ rights that the Pride Parade was confined to a three-block stretch, carefully guarded by security.


Last year, we were in Oslo, Norway, for Pride, and the event was a joyous, city-wide celebration seemingly without any controversy at all. It made a nice change after Istanbul and Sarajevo.

(But sadly, two years before, a man killed two people and seriously wounded nine others in an attack on Oslo Pride, proving that hate knows no borders.)


In our travels, we’ve visited lots of other places where LGBTQ visibility is common, like Reykjavik, where the Rainbow Street, known locally as Skólavörðustígur, celebrates Pride year-round.


And London, where we visited Leadenhall Market, which stood in for Diagon Alley in one of the Harry Potter films; from 2021-2023, it hosted an installation showing the evolution of the Pride flag — perhaps a subtle dig at J.K. Rowling’s increasingly unbalanced anti-trans views.

On the other hand, in many of the other places we’ve visited, we’ve seen no signs of LGBTQ visibility at all. The more repressive and anti-democratic a place is, the more likely this is to be.

Which brings us back to America, which is definitely now at a crossroads when it comes to the treatment and visibility of its LGBTQ residents.

Yes, yes, it was such a sick burn by the Trump administration to propose renaming the S.S. Harvey Milk — a ship named after the famous civil rights leader — during Pride Month. And also to ban the flying of Pride flags on government buildings, and to openly pressure corporations to end their sponsorship of Pride events.

And, yes, the administration is now encouraging other countries to harass and intimidate their LGBTQ citizens too, including banning their Pride events.

This is having a real impact on this year’s Pride, with many events already canceled.

Sure, they can cancel events, but do these people really think they can cancel Pride?

Have these folks honestly never watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas?

Just like Christmas isn’t about packages, boxes, and bags, Pride isn’t about floats, music, and glitter.

It’s about a feeling — of pride, damn it!

Well, maybe it’s about pride and glitter. Because the world always needs a little bit of glitter — now more than ever.


Anyway, just like the Grinch couldn’t stop Christmas from coming, the forces of ignorance and repression can’t stop Pride from coming either.

They couldn’t stop it in Istanbul or Sarajevo, and they can’t stop it in America either.

It’s June, and news flash: It came! Somehow or other, it came just the same!

And now Pride is here.

Celebrate it — and feel it.

Happy Pride, Everyone! And here’s hoping for better times ahead.

Michael & Brent