Pride at a crossroads as corporate support wanes and political winds shift

Matt was eighteen when he left Crewe, convinced the town had no place for a young gay man. The only LGBT gathering he knew of was a makeshift bar tucked behind a curtain in a pub on the outskirts. He stayed away for eleven years. This June, he came home for Crewe Pride, and what he found startled him. The town that once felt hostile had transformed into something welcoming, family-centred, alive with community. "It really took me back to when I was a kid growing up here, trying to navigate my identity," he said. "It felt so important to be there and see how a town that wasn't particularly welcoming has changed and flourished."

Matt's homecoming captures something larger happening across Britain's Pride landscape. The massive, corporate-sponsored festivals that dominated the 2010s—the kind where every major brand slapped a rainbow logo on their social media in June—are giving way to smaller, grassroots events rooted in actual communities. But this shift isn't simply a return to Pride's origins. It's being forced by a collision of forces: corporate retreat, political hostility, internal divisions over trans rights, and a dawning recognition that the movement has lost its way.

Pride began as protest. In 1972, Britain's first official Pride march took place in London, just five years after homosexuality was decriminalised. LGBT people were still losing jobs and homes because of their sexuality. Police raids and surveillance made daily life precarious. Manchester's Pride started even smaller in 1985—a bring-and-buy sale on Canal Street to raise money for an HIV ward during the epidemic's height. No one imagined it would become what it did: a four-day August bank holiday extravaganza with colourful floats, loud music, and thousands of spectators in rainbow face paint filling every pavement.

By 2019, Manchester Pride had outgrown itself. The headline act—Ariana Grande—performed on a purpose-built stage elsewhere in the city, with premium ticket prices. The organisers faced criticism for cutting funding to charities, including an HIV charity and a condom distribution scheme. Last year, the company behind Manchester Pride went into voluntary liquidation, owing more than £1 million to suppliers and performers, including Nelly Furtado. Local businesses and charities have since created a not-for-profit group called Manchester Village Pride, aiming to stage a much cheaper, community-rooted festival. "When things were being taken out of the village, that was the first sign that things were going in the wrong direction," said Carl Austin-Behan, helping to organise the scaled-back event. "It should be about the community. We certainly don't need to be spending the amount of money that was spent on Manchester Pride."

But the retreat from corporate mega-Pride isn't only about internal reckoning. The political winds have shifted dramatically. A few years ago, June meant an avalanche of corporate rainbow flags on social media—what critics called "rainbow-washing." According to Guardian analysis, mentions of Pride by the UK's ten biggest listed or headquartered companies fell 92 percent between 2023 and last year. Phil Douglas, organiser of Newcastle Pride, described the new atmosphere plainly: "There is a general nervousness from organisations and companies to be front and centre in their support. Some want to support us but not have their logo attached. They don't want the backlash which is right there ready in the online community." A 2024 Ipsos survey found that the share of British adults wanting companies to promote LGBT rights dropped from 52 percent in 2021 to 44 percent this year.

Meanwhile, councils controlled by Reform UK—a party that won power on fourteen councils in May's local elections—have begun removing rainbow flags and cutting Pride funding. In Durham, the new Reform administration took down a rainbow flag from council headquarters and withdrew a £2,500 funding contribution to Durham Pride. In St Helens, the Reform council leader instructed officials to cease all engagement with Pride and removed festival displays from libraries. Merseyside Police and Fire and Rescue Service withdrew from Pride events after legal advice warned that uniformed participation by public bodies could breach rules on political impartiality. West Midlands Ambulance Service did the same. Darren Grimes, deputy leader of Durham Council and one of Reform's highest-profile gay members, argued that Pride has moved away from gay equality and become bound up with gender identity debates. "You've slain the dragon in the pursuit of equality and now all you are left with is a few rambling sheep," he said. Yet Durham Pride still took place, and organisers called it their biggest year ever, raising around £25,000 from individual donors and trade unions.

The trans rights debate has fractured Pride from within. Some gay and lesbian people who describe themselves as "gender critical"—sceptical of aspects of the trans rights movement—say they feel sidelined by Pride's focus. A lesbian woman who didn't want to be named told the BBC she no longer attends because she thinks it has become dominated by trans issues. But for transgender people, the picture is darker. Lauren, a transgender volunteer at Sparkle, the UK's biggest transgender celebration held in Manchester each June, said: "We've got a lot of stigma and hatred against us. You've got people trying to push us back into the dark and it does make it harder to live our lives." Another transgender woman staying in Manchester's Gay Village said she wanted to attend events but felt unsafe leaving her hotel. Security has become a central concern, especially after last month's attack in Berlin, when a car drove into a Pride crowd, killing one woman and injuring twenty-nine others.

Yet younger LGBT people still see Pride as essential. A 2024 YouGov survey of more than 500 LGBT Britons aged sixteen to twenty-four found that 90 percent say Pride month is "very" or "fairly" important. The future, it seems, belongs to events like Crewe and Ulverston—smaller gatherings where the cobbled streets fill with locals clapping and filming on phones as a procession of rainbow flags passes by, led by a brass band playing gay anthems. These are Pride events for the community first, not the spectacle. In a landscape fractured by corporate retreat, political hostility, and internal division, the intimate, local Pride may be the only kind that survives.