Pride events in 2026

Traditionally, June is considered Pride month in honour of the Stonewall Uprising on 28 June 1969, which is argued by some to be the birth of the gay rights movement.

However, there are over 270 Prides taking place in the UK in 2026 starting in February and continuing until the end of November.

In the north west, we’ve already seen the Bury Pride Rainbow Train, Trafford Pride, Bolton Pride, Pride on the Range (Whalley Range) and Bury Pride.

Coming up is:

Blackpool Pride (6 June),

the Pink Picnic (Salford Pride) (13 June),

Warrington Pride (13 June),

Sparkle Weekend, Manchester (26-28 June),

Macclesfield Pride (4 July),

Oldham Pride (11 July),

Weaste Pride (11 July),

Veteran’s Pride (24 July),

Liverpool Pride (25 July),

Stockport Pride (26 July).

From August onwards and a fully comprehensive list, please see here.

Mark Jennings

Please don’t think me malicious, but I have no hesitation in naming and shaming Mark Jennings. Hopefully, the previous article on “Pride Events” might have made him quite ill. Pride flags are not the problem, but bigotry dressed up as victimhood is.

A man who claims to have a “phobia” of Pride flags just lost his second big case – after demanding tens of thousands of pounds because rainbow imagery at work supposedly violated his Christian rights.

Mark Jennings, a Roman Catholic and evangelical Christian and former social work student, has spent years trying to turn his discomfort with LGBTQ+ visibility into a legal weapon. First he sued NatWest after seeing a Pride display in a Kent bank branch, saying it triggered “severe psychological distress” and clashed with his Catholic beliefs.

He wanted the bank to stop promoting Pride in that branch and pay him £35,000 in damages. Courts in Scotland threw the case out, noting that his pleadings relied on bogus, AI‑generated legal “precedents” and failed to show any actual unlawful discrimination.

Jennings accepted a role as a work coach with the Department for Work and Pensions in June 2024, but reportedly began making a series of demands after receiving the job offer by phone.

Those requests included not being exposed to Pride imagery in the workplace and not hearing colleagues “using different pronouns” while at work. After the DWP refused to meet those conditions, Jennings turned down the role and later brought legal action.

Now, Jennings has lost again – this time at an employment tribunal. He claimed his employer discriminated against him because they refused to remove Pride flags and rainbow imagery from the office and asked staff to respect LGBTQ+ colleagues.

He argued he had a diagnosable “phobia” of Pride materials that should be treated as a disability, and that as a Christian he should not be forced to see or work around symbols that, in his view, promote “social values contrary to his faith.”

The tribunal wasn’t buying it. Judges accepted that Jennings has real mental health conditions – autism, borderline personality disorder, anxiety, PTSD – but found no medical evidence that “Pride phobia” is a recognised condition, and no legal basis for treating LGBTQ+ visibility as an attack on religion.

They ruled that employers are allowed to display Pride imagery and foster an inclusive environment, and that asking everyone to respect LGBTQ+ colleagues is not discrimination against Christians. In plain terms: your right to believe what you want does not include a right to erase queer people, or their flags, out of public view.

What’s striking is how familiar this pattern is. Around the world, we’re seeing a new kind of backlash where people try to turn equality itself into persecution – arguing that rainbow lanyards, pronoun badges, and Pride posters are “hostile” to them.

Jennings pushed that argument as far as it could go, twice, and independent courts have now told him no.

That matters beyond one bank and one office. It’s a clear signal from the legal system: inclusion isn’t discrimination, and LGBTQ+ visibility is not an assault on anyone’s faith.

To all bigots: Please leave LGBT+ people alone. To the NatWest and the DWP – thank you for flying the flag for the LGBT+ community.

63 years ago, the Quakers stood up for gay dignity

Like most Protestant denominations, Quakers hold differing views of homosexuality within their ranks. But no other mainstream Protestant religion has embraced LGBT+ identity like the Quakers, known officially as the Religious Society of Friends.

The clearest example is a text promulgated over seven years in meetings by a group of Quaker writers, psychiatrists, psychologists and teachers, assembled to consider issues surrounding homosexuality.

Published in 1963, “Towards a Quaker View of Sex” asserted, “An act which expresses true affection between two individuals and gives pleasure to them both, does not seem to us to be sinful by reason alone of the fact that it is homosexual.”

The book sparked fierce debate among Quaker communities, with one member from the Friends Temperance and Moral Union calling its findings “poison.” But the book also set the Quakers on a path to forward-thinking policy on LGBT+ rights, at a time when other Christian denominations remained adamantly opposed to homosexuality.

Since the publication of “Towards a Quaker View of Sex,” the Friends have shared a compassionate embrace with LGBT+ people in the movement for equal rights.

In 1973, a group of Quakers established the Friends Homosexual Fellowship to promote dialogue over the rights of gay people in the wider Quaker community. 

In 1987, a Friends community considered same-sex marriage for the first time, and at their Yearly Meeting in 2009, Quakers in Britain became the first religious organisation to formally recognize same-sex marriage.

in 2025, British Quakers rejected the country’s Supreme Court ruling that prevents trans people from using single-sex spaces.

Said one friend at the meeting held to address the issue, “This is what love requires of us.”

Lil Lesbian Nan

Her granddaughter made her do it! Now she has 177,000 followers on Instagram.