Experience

Brussels Pride 2026 on Saturday 16 May, will celebrate 30 years of Pride: how rainbow historiography deletes two decades

Posted by Timothy on

Brussels Pride – In the Capital of Europe. That is the official name of Brussels Pride. The rebrand from Belgian Pride happened for the 2023 edition, as it is now organised by visit.brussels, the tourism board of the Brussels-Capital Region. This year, the pride parade will be held on Saturday 16 May. It will celebrate 30 years of pride in the capital of Belgium.

While the Facebook page of the event hasn’t seen a recent update, the website states “See you on Saturday 16 May 2026… …to celebrate 30 years of Brussels Pride!”

This post is triggered by a post by Ket Mag Brussels Queer Magazine.

Thirty years after its consolidation as a national event, the Belgian Pride or or Brussels Pride occupies a complex position in Brussels’ public space. It is simultaneously a political march, a large-scale cultural event and a major tourist attraction. This dual — and sometimes contradictory — role reflects the trajectory of a movement that has secured significant legal and social gains, while facing growing concerns around institutionalisation, commercialisation and political dilution.

With the next edition scheduled for Saturday, 16 May 2026, the question of what Belgian Pride represents today — and what it should become — remains open.

From activist mobilisation to annual institution

Belgian Pride traces its origins to the ‘Gay Days’ organised from the late 1970s onwards by activist collectives such as De Rooie Vlinder, followed by organisations including Tels Quels. These early mobilisations were explicitly political and emerged in a context where public visibility carried tangible personal and legal risks.

A turning point came in 1996, when the first large, unified march in Brussels was organised by the Belgian Lesbian and Gay Pride association. From that moment, the event became annual, progressively more structured and increasingly centralised, eventually adopting the name Belgian Pride.

During its formative years, the march articulated a series of clear political demands: anti-discrimination legislation, legal recognition of same-sex couples, marriage and adoption rights, protections for trans people, and increased visibility for lesbian, bisexual and intersex communities. 

Many of these demands translated into concrete legal advances during the 2000s. As a result, Pride came to be widely perceived as both a successful political tool and a celebratory marker of progress.

Expansion, sponsorship and institutional recognition

Over the past decade, Belgian Pride has undergone significant expansion. Attendance has increased sharply, the number of floats and stages has multiplied, and the event has become firmly embedded in the Brussels events calendar. Partnerships with visit.brussels and the recognition of pride as part of the Brussels-Capital Region’s intangible cultural heritage have reinforced its status as a flagship cultural event.

This institutional recognition has coincided with the growing presence of corporate sponsors, political parties and public institutions marching under rainbow branding. While this visibility contributes to mainstream acceptance, it has also generated sustained criticism from within the LGBTQIA+ community.

Pinkwashing?

Ket Mag notes that these developments have intensified debates around pinkwashing, political co-optation and the risk of reducing Pride to a depoliticised spectacle. 

Community organisations regularly stress that Pride cannot be understood solely as a celebratory or promotional event, but must remain a space for addressing ongoing issues such as violence, precarity, racism and exclusion – including within Brussels itself.

Generational perspectives and shifting priorities

Interviews and testimonies from activists active in the 1990s consistently highlight a Pride that was smaller, less secure and more confrontational. Participation often entailed personal risk, and public hostility was widespread. From this perspective, the scale and visibility of today’s Pride is interpreted as a tangible sign of progress.

Younger generations, however, tend to articulate a different set of priorities. Having grown up in a context where key legal rights were already established, their focus has shifted towards structural and intersectional issues. These include institutional transphobia, police violence, racism within LGBTQIA+ spaces, the situation of migrants and undocumented people, mental health, and international solidarity with queer communities facing repression.

Ket Mag observes that these differing perspectives are not necessarily contradictory, but they do highlight a tension between Pride as a symbol of achieved rights and Pride as a platform for unresolved struggles.

Organisational fragility and future directions

The bankruptcy of The Belgian Pride association in 2024 exposed the structural fragility underlying the organisation of one of Brussels’ largest annual events. The continuation of Brussels Pride through new partnerships and the reinforced involvement of actors such as RainbowHouse Brussels underscored the extent to which Pride relies on a broader associative ecosystem rather than a single organising body.

Now what?

From Ket Mag’s perspective, this moment marked an opportunity to reassess priorities. Several recurring demands emerge from community debates: re-anchoring Pride within Brussels’ grassroots organisations, ensuring accessibility for precarious and disabled participants, placing clear limits on corporate branding, and granting greater visibility and decision-making power to marginalised groups within the programme.

At thirty years, Belgian Pride stands at a crossroads. Its future will likely depend on how effectively it can balance celebration with political relevance, institutional support with community accountability, and visibility with solidarity. 

For Ket Mag, the central issue is not whether Pride should be festive or political, but whether it can continue to be both without losing sight of those it was originally meant to serve.

A gap in the story

I was born in 1981 and began ‘doing something’ with my homosexuality at 17.5, in 1999. I joined Enig Verschil, the now defunct LGBT youth association in Antwerp. I also was (co) editor for De Magneet, the now defunct magazine of Het Roze Huis in Antwerp. I wrote for ZiZo, the now defunct magazine and news site of çavaria. I worked with Gay2Day, I ran Antwerp-based LGBT news blog Talk of the Town and later the Belgium-wide LGBTQIA+ news website Be Out. Yes, all these were stopped. Because things change, because Zeitgeist, because life. I still write about ‘gay stuff’ on Trip By Trip.

This is just to give you some context. My heydays in the gay scene started in the early 2000s. I stopped with ‘gay blogging’ daily on 3 January 2021. I was turning 40 that year. I wasn’t going out anymore, my network was quitting rainbow activism and younger activists had or have no interest in connecting with a 40-year-old cis white middle class gay man to provide stories. I’m not bitter about that. That’s life. 

Anyway. So I wasn’t of gay activist age in the 1980s and early 1990s, which out of nostalgia are now glorified. Veterans of these times and young queer activists of now (mis)use the memories of that era to now condemn the pinkwashing and commercialisation of pride and rainbow activism. 

And now the world turning sour, the corporate support is faltering and the critics call out the support always only was a façade. They’re not wrong. 

Unfortunately, Ket Mag falls in the trap in which so many gay, queer, LGBTQIA+, … activists fall: forgetting the late 1990s, the 2000s and the 2010s happened as well. 

In those years, rainbow initiatives were yearning for corporate and commercial recognition. I remember Davy Brocatus, who was on the organising committee of EuroGames 2007 Antwerp and World Outgames 2013 Antwerp, complaining on finding so few (big) sponsors. For apparel, a deal was struck with Cavallo Sport (if my memory serves me well). Not Nike, Adidas, or an H&M.

So while we complain of a Meir shopping street now suffocating in rainbow merchandise, there was a time we begged for recognition by big brands. For some, that’s an inconvenient truth. 

It’s often forgotten it’s not marketing directors who convinced CEO’s to agree it’s good for the brand to associated with gays and lesbians. It’s lower-level staff who from bottom-up worked hard to convince the hierarchy it’s not bad for business to support the rainbow. 

A wrong rewrite of queer history

Why is this page of rainbow history ‘forgotten’? Because it doesn’t fit the current narrative. Somehow, the current dominating stance on queer activism doesn’t allow nuance or dissenting storytelling. 

2027

In 2027, the Museum Aan de Stroom (Museum At the Stream) or MAS will hold an exhibition on LGBTQIA+ in Antwerp, as Antwerp Pride will celebrate twenty years of existence. 

I fear the exhibition will also fall in that trap. It will try to link pride solely to the 1969 Stonewall Inn riots in New York, it will link it too strongly to early pride days in Belgium and it will skip the early 21st century to call out the current pinkwashing by businesses and (world) politics. 

Not in a void

But pride and rainbow activism in general don’t exist in a void. They exist in a reality around. Our surroundings changed and change all the time. People expect professionalism. That costs money.

Organising events and running an non-governmental organisation has become so complex. That requires professionalism (knowledge) and funding. Subsidies are going down. So the money must come from somewhere else. And in Belgium, we don’t have a culture of personal contributions.

The latest on LGBTQIA+ events such as prides in Belgium

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