Madrid Pride, or MADO, is a weeklong celebration that includes outdoor concerts on six different stages, parties, expositions, sporting events, and more. It is Europe’s largest pride festival, which shouldn’t be a surprise, given Madrid’s extensive LGBT scene year-round. It’s estimated that more than 2 million people attend pride festivities in Madrid every year.
Billed as the largest LGBT gathering in the U.S., San Francisco Pride has a long history dating back to the first event in 1970. Its parade includes more than 500 contingents and performers and 20 stages for music ranging from Lady Gaga to the Backstreet Boys. The event is held outside City Hall, where Harvey Milk once gave an impassioned speech for gay rights. Plus, it didn’t hurt that Proposition 8, the bill that banned gay marriage in California, was struck down two days before SF Pride 2013.
As the most populous city in the U.S., notoriously liberal New York City makes the list for its enormous pride celebration each year. The celebration began in 1969 following the Stonewall Riots in New York City. This marked the beginning of the modern gay rights movement and blazed a trail for other cities to follow. This parade has been blessed with enormous judicial decisions coming down shortly before its festivities kick off, such as the legalization of gay marriage in New York City in 2011 and the end of DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act) that prevented married gay couples from receiving federal benefits, among other things, in 2013.
Officially the biggest single-city pride parade in the world, the Parada do Orgulho Gay de Sao Paulo attracts more than 4.2 million people annually who join in the revelry. Since its foundation in 1999, the APOGLBT has hosted a month-long celebration of pride in Sao Paulo that includes the Cycle of Debates, a LGBT cultural fair, a citizenship award for respect of diversity, and the main event — the parade itself — which sends the city into a frenzy (in a good way)!
CSD Berlin stands for Christopher Street Day, and has been held since 1970, drawing more than half a million spectators each year. It consists of a month-long festival and includes musical performances, lectures, art installations, and cultural exhibits on LGBT life and the civil rights movement. Businesses and community organizations get involved, opening their doors to festival-goers to promote the local economy, and Pride Month ends with a rally in the shadows of Brandenburg Gate, one of the best-known landmarks in Germany. The gate featured prominently in media coverage of the opening of the wall in 1989 and has been a site for major historical events. Today it’s considered a symbol of European unity and peace. The Berlin pride parade is named in memory of the Stonewall Riots, the first big uprising of LGBT people against police assaults that took place at the Stonewall Inn, a bar on Christopher Street in the district of Greenwich Village, New York City, June 28, 1969.
Though it doesn’t necessarily draw the biggest crowd, Amsterdam’s Pride celebration makes the list due to the sheer coolness of its Canal Parade. Floating down the Prinsengracht Canal are colorfully decorated boats, complete with decked out dancers and performers, as spectators line the streets to see the show. The city that specializes in nightlife goes all out, hosting enormous LGBT parties and other events at nightclubs and along the street.
The 10-day long Toronto Pride Week is billed as Canada’s largest LGBT celebrations, but also one of the premier arts and cultural festivals in the country. Events include the Dyke March, Trans Pride, Family Pride, Clean, Sober & Proud Place, and the main Pride Parade itself. Toronto hosts more than a million people during the course of its events and closes 22 city blocks to contain all the festivities.
Attracting more than 1 million people, Chicago’s Pride celebration stretches throughout the city from the downtown Loop to neighborhoods all over Chicagoland, including the famous LGBT scene in Boystown. Chicago celebrities, athletes, and politicians turn out every year to support the event. The parade is normally led by the mayor and players from the Blackhawks, Bulls, Bears, Cubs, and anyone else around who can stop by. The parade has grown considerably over the years, forcing organizers to remap the route in order to accommodate larger crowds.
Held annually, EuroPride is hosted by a different European city each year and is considered the big daddy of LGBT events on the continent. Usually consisting of month-long celebrations, Europride includes sporting and artistic events, live music, club nights, an AIDS vigil, and an enormous pride parade. EuroPride has been going strong since its inception in 1992. The number of attendees has grown astronomically through the years, swelling from 100,000 in its early years to more than 1.3 million in recent years.
The honor of hosting WorldPride has become so great that it almost rivals that of hosting the Olympics. Cities compete to be chosen by InterPride, the international association of pride coordinators. It encompasses a whole array of pride activities ranging from parades, festivals and cultural activities to history exhibits. WorldPride has only been held three times as of 2013. The first WorldPride was in Rome in 2000, followed by Jerusalem in 2006 and London in 2012. With the 45th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots approaching in 2014, the festival will be held in Toronto, and will then move to a five-year cycle.
